


The Arithmetic of Love (For Dummies! edition)

by sure sure (getoffmysheets)



Series: Lovers and Fools [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Hot Messes Only Please, Malcolm is the sad child who follows his mom Jessica around, Multi, Musical References, Polyamory, Soulmates, Why is Foggy the only person here with a happy childhood?, just give Karen a damn drink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-03-08 22:50:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18904264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/sure%20sure
Summary: Trish’s soul lived in feast and Jess’s lived in famine and that was just the natural order of things.---Foggy wanted it to be Matt, with a desperation that bordered on mental instability. But the math between them just didn't add up.





	1. Tricky Equations

**Author's Note:**

> If you're not familiar with the 'Lovers and Fools' verse, all you really need to know is that soulmates are a well-acknowledge fact of life, identified when their soul-song, their 'Echo', and yours match. You listen to your Echo using an electro-soul machine - ESM for short.
> 
> *sigh*  
> I'm already sorry I wrote this...

There isn’t really much to say, as far as Jessica is concerned. She’s certain Trish would have plenty to say, most of it irrelevant or having way too many emotions for her to stomach.

 

At first, her mom assured her that she was just a late bloomer. Fifteen or sixteen is the most common age to begin presenting an Echo, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only time anyone has. After her family died, Dorothy insisted on taking her again, despite her protests – before she realized that Jessica wouldn’t play a part of her dog and pony show with _Patsy_.

 

Dorothy’s nagging be damned, the music still didn’t come for her.

 

The first therapist tried to suggest that maybe Jessica was just delayed – which was absurd, because even Dorothy Walker could see that Jessica was well settled into herself and not easily changed by any.

 

The second concluded that the trauma of losing her entire family has frozen Jessica – maybe even forever – into a childlike state.

 

Trish has a theory, too, later on. That her… _enhancements_ have made Jessica more resistant to mental probing. After the Kilgrave disaster has concluded, good and bad, she supposes that Trish was a little bit right in the end. It was just too bad that ability kicked in too late to save Reva Connors, and it might be true, but she’s actually more inclined to believe the third shrink, as much as that pains her to say.

 

“Jessica is not delayed. If anything, I would consider her quite advanced. She’s clearly very intelligent and aware of others, physically and emotionally. I believe what’s happened to her is even rarer. The ESM is designed to study a person’s psychological make-up. Even a sociopath would produce a sound – maybe not a _nice_ sound, but a sound nonetheless.”

 

“So…so she’s _worse_ than a sociopath?” Dorothy asked, visibly recoiling.

 

“No, Mrs. Walker. I’m telling you that her mind – at a very basic, fundamental level – is too closed for even an advanced electro-soul machine to read. There is nothing to hear, because Jessica _does not want_ to be heard.”

 

So. That’s that, then.

 

Jessica is well aware that Trish feels a bit sorry for her – being a fully grown adult without an Echo is like having no soul, no matter what culture you’re in. Most people can’t even comprehend the idea of it. But Trish always would give her a teasing smile and say, “You have a soul, Jess. It’s just…hiding, for now.”

 

Jess feels a bit of pity for Trish in turn.

 

Trish has four Echoes, herself and three soulmates, and the two of them have done their level best to hide that since she was nineteen, because Trish actually _was_ a late bloomer.

 

Most children settled into themselves sometime around high school age, usually between fifteen and seventeen. Jess is certain that Trish took so long because of Dorothy – after all, how could she hold herself into her own skin and personality, when her mother was constantly dragging her along wherever she pleased?

 

Then, like a meadow at summertime bursting into full bloom, Trish’s soul rushed out four songs all at once.

 

That night, she laughed, she cried, she danced and sang.

 

Then she and Jessica immediately worked on trying to make sure no one ever, ever discovered this.

 

Having more than one Echo was something of a controversial topic anyway, and if they’d told her mother, Dorothy would’ve thrown a fucking shitfit. But Jessica was more concerned about other potential problems. Some of the Patsy fans were well-meaning but creepy, some were very sweet and thoughtful, and some were downright scary.

 

After getting out of rehab for the very last time, Trish took on a revolving door of boyfriends that left her perpetually dissatisfied, more bored of each one than the last, but telling the whole world she had three soulmates was an invitation into the colorful hellscape of stalking and potential fraud that Jessica wanted to keep as far from Trish as possible.

 

If Jess had a twinge now and then, just a pinch of feeling where she wished for a place in that four person line-up, well…that was nobody’s business anyway. She kept _that_ little nugget to herself. She knew, better than ever, that her affection was something of a curse.

 

So, Trish’s soul lived in feast and Jess’s lived in famine and in both of their minds, that was just the natural order of things. The grass was green, the sky was blue, Trish Walker was extra-adored, and Jessica Jones wouldn’t let anyone in.

 

No surprises here.

\---

At twelve, Matt was considered very young to have developed his Echoes. He always suspected that was because of his extrasensory powers. He was forced to acknowledge more about the world around him than many adults, never mind children, were required to deal with on a daily basis.

 

Four was…four was a lot. To have any more than two was considered quite unusual in the first place, but four was a lot. And if that weren’t enough, he developed them all at once. Most people with multiple soulmates gain them gradually, over time, some not even appearing until after they’ve gone past full adulthood.

 

Stick told him that it wasn’t important, that they could be easily ignored. That anything outside of his own body was either a distraction or a hostile force.

 

But his dad had told him that meeting her – like most people, his Irish Catholic father had assumed that Matt’s soulmate would be just one person of the opposite gender – and Jack had told him that meeting her would be beautiful.

 

“When it happens to you, Matty, it won’t be like anything else. Everything in your life will be clearer, and it doesn’t matter who she is, she’s gonna be the most amazing person you’ve ever met, inside and out. And the greatest part of this is, she’s gonna feel the exact same way about _you_ , Matty. You’ll be her one and only.”

 

But what happens when you have three separate one and onlys?

 

In college, he actually felt like he may have started understanding what his father meant, and the first time is when he meets Foggy.

 

Foggy was not like anyone he’d ever met before. He was joyful, and funny, and unapologetically awkward. But also charming and kind and he treated Matt like a real, whole human being instead of like a walking talking disability.

 

But there was a tiny little problem there. Foggy’s Echo was painfully normal. He had two, got them at sixteen. The most average number, the most average age. Nothing unusual there at all. Matt and Foggy’s numbers don’t match up, which either means that Foggy doesn’t belong to him or that one of Matt’s song is what people call a ‘dead match’ – when you have another person’s song in your Echo, but they don’t have yours. It’s a one-sided guarantee straight to the friendzone.

 

Then the second time, he’d been certain he was on the nose with Elektra – especially when she told him that her song type was really rare. “My Echo has no spoken words.” And his heart had lurch, aching with excitement. _Oh god, I have her. She’s the cougar, my roaring wildcat_. “Have you ever seen a music box, with one of those dancing ballerinas inside?”

 

Confused, Matt’s spirits began to fall nearly as quickly as they rose. “Uh-huh?”

 

He can hear the warmth of her smile in her voice, never realizing that she was about to disappoint him. “It sounds like that, at the beginning and the end.”

\---

“ _Nelson and Murdock_. Sounds better.”

 

“You think?” Foggy asked, pleased.

 

“Yeah. Can’t see worth shit, but my hearing’s spectacular,” Matt said with a gentle slur in his words, a big smile on his face that Foggy ached to taste on his own lips.

 

“Me and you, pal. We’re gonna do this. We’re gonna be the best damn avocados this city’s ever _seen_ ,” he said, with mock gravity.

 

Matt gave an adorable little drunken giggle. “Best damn avocados!”

 

Foggy shook his head and smiled. “Let’s get the hell outta here, c’mon.”

 

“You’re strong!” Matt said.

 

“I work out,” Foggy chuckled, since Matt knew he was full of shit.

 

“You’ve already gotten your Echo, right?” Foggy said suddenly, recalling Matt’s words. _My hearing’s spectacular_. Matt would definitely be able to hear his own song and the song of his soulmate.

 

“Uh-huh,” Matt slurred and giggled again. “Guess what, Foggy?”

 

Foggy mouth curved up helplessly into a smile. “What, Matty?”

 

“I got _four_ ,” he said, grinning up at the winter sky. “Foggy-Foggy-Foggy…four.”

 

His stomach dropped. “Um…what?”

 

“Mm-hm,” Matt hummed, apparently unaware that he’d dropped a bomb onto all of Foggy’s fondest hopes and dreams. “I’m a weirdoooooo…”

 

Swallowing down the bitter disappointment welling into his heart, Foggy said “That’s actually pretty cool, you know. I’ve never met anyone else with more than two.”

 

Matt hummed again, head leaning on his shoulder. “Four happens to one in every twenty-five thousand people. Approximately.”

 

Foggy grinned despite himself. “God, you’re such a fucking nerd.” Stopping to stare at him a moment before he asked, “Have you met one of them yet?”

 

“Thought-thought it might be Elektra,” he admitted, now looking so pathetically sad it would be comical if Foggy weren’t so fucking gone on him.

 

“She wasn’t?” Foggy asked, genuinely surprised. He _hated_ Elektra, personally he thought she did bad things to Matt’s emotional and mental health, but she really seemed serious about Matt, and no one ever said that the people you love had to be good for you. _Like for instance my obsessive crush on my best friend, that kind of bad for you_.

 

Matt was the first person Foggy had ever had that feeling about. He liked all his girlfriends, they were lovely. Marci for example was smart, ambitious, clever, and she was going to be killer in the courtroom someday. But he was never fooled into thinking she could be The One.

 

“I thought she was the wildcat,” Matt said nonsensically, miserably burying his face in Foggy’s coat and shivering slightly with the cold as they stumbled back to their apartment. “But she was a-she was a fucking _ballerina_.”

 

Matt almost never swore that vehemently, which was how Foggy knew he was really devastated by that. Patting his friend’s arm in sympathy, despite the victorious feeling swelling in his chest, Foggy said “I don’t know what any of that meant, but I’m really sorry she wasn’t a…cougar, buddy.”

 

Sleepily, Matt said “She’s-she’s a wildcat. A screamer. _Roars_ …like a cougar.”

 

Laughing at him, he nudged him slightly. “Sounds sexy.” He meant to say it jokingly, but the vodka made it serious. “How do you know it’s a she?”

 

“Just-just a feeling,” he admitted. “…not as sure of the other two.”  

 

And as devastated as he was, with that conversation, Foggy knew his wish was doomed to failure. He could be Matt’s friend, his business partner, his follow avocado, but not his love. Foggy wanted his soulmate to be Matt, with a desperation that bordered on mental instability. But the math between them just didn’t add up.

 

Two divided by four was always going to equal two, no matter what he did and while eighteen year old Franklin Nelson would never have known it, his feelings for him were dead on arrival.

 

And then one day, he met a wildcat.


	2. Long Division

On the day Matthew Murdock meets Jessica Jones, it goes something like this…

 

Because Turk Barrett can’t seem to keep his weasely nose out of trouble, a beautiful night in midspring found Daredevil pinning him to the ground. Turk immediately began babbling platitudes. “Look-look man, I don’t have it anymore.” When Daredevil growled and pushed down just a little more on his fractured wrist, he whimpered “I swear, I _swear_ , I really don’t have it anymore. You’re too late! Two nights ago, I got shaken down by the only bitch in the Kitchen scarier than you. Coulda made two hundred grand off that thing, but she stood on my neck and yanked the damn necklace right outta my hand!”

 

 _The only bitch in the Kitchen scarier than you_.

 

And Matt thought, _Oh no. Elektra’s back. Why?_ “Dark hair with swords, right? Where did she go afterwards?”

 

“Swords? Fuck no. Jones don’t need anything but her boot in your ass,” Turk wheezed, shuddering with horror.

 

“ _Jones_?”

 

“Y-yeah. Jessica Jones. Private investigator on 46th Street.” He chuckled weakly. “You want the necklace, you’ll have to convince her to give it to you. Wish you the best of luck on that.”

 

“Address,” Matt hissed, frustrated.

 

Just for his trouble, he made Turk limp all the way back to his car himself.

 

Whoever Jessica Jones was, she left the windows in her office open. It was on the fifth floor, but that wasn’t any kind of deterrent to Daredevil. The room was empty but for the hum of a refrigerator – not that unusual, after all Nelson and Murdock had one. The whole smelled strongly of whisky, new paint, wood vanish, and a female body. Huh, a male one too, but his scent wasn’t quite as soaked into the furnishings as her was. Sawdust and the faintest hint of plaster dust, too, coming from a large empty space in the middle of a wall. Maybe Jones did some recent renovations?

 

Beyond the front door to the office, there was a clattering in hallway, near the elevator as two people stumbled out of it. A male voice softly said “Easy, just take it easy for a minute.” His heart was beating a bit too fast, a little stutter in the rhythm that could be excitement, but combined with his voice, sounded more like fear. “Can you slow down?”

 

“Go home,” a woman’s voice grumbled, husky and impatient. Her footsteps weren’t as steady, but her heartbeat was…

 

Jesus, it was _loud_ , beating so strong. Matt never knew anyone’s heart could beat that hard, but it was so steady, so regular that it could only be natural.

 

Turk made it sound like Jones was a pretty tough customer, but Matt _needed_ that necklace. Karen’s life might be depending on it, and this wasn’t a Daredevil problem – it started out as a Nelson and Murdock problem.

 

They’d agreed to represent a Guatemalan maid and her son who were both accused of theft by their boss, a multimillionaire named Bart Montenegro. He claimed that the housekeeper and her son stole a diamond and sapphire necklace from his wife’s dressing room worth nearly half a million dollars.

 

After assuring Foggy that both the woman and her son were telling truth, they’d agreed to defend them, but after the three of them had started uncovering evidence that the man was using the item to commit insurance fraud, they’d begun receiving threatening notes that seemed targeted toward Karen especially. Matt wouldn’t take that sitting down, so naturally Daredevil came into play. That necklace was the last piece of the puzzle he needed to provide to prove Maricela and Angel’s innocence and keep Karen safe. If it meant Karen’s life, he wasn’t going to leave the office without it.

 

All he intended to do was ask Jones what she’d done with the damn jewelry. Then the woman with the loud, _loud_ heart opened the office door and stomped down the hallway toward him. Matt wanted to introduce himself, be polite.

 

He could hear her injuries as she came closer, a crackle in her breathing as her lungs protested the movement of her ribs with each inhale, smell the blood trickling down her leg into her boot.

 

But the moment Jones saw him standing there, despite her cracked ribs and the blood, she came at him swinging.

 

She was fast, but he dodged aside of the first blow. He wasn’t quite fast enough to fully evade the second behind it.

 

Even that glancing blow felt like being hit with a bag of bricks, her knuckles battering the side of his hip and making Matt struggle to scramble out of her way. She grabbed at his shoulder with fingers that bruised him almost instantly, punching him in the gut with her iron and brick hand and knocking the wind out of him, pain exploding in his mind.

 

Matt, wheezing for air, reached out as she moved to pummel him again and grabbed her by the side, squeezing her cracked ribs even though it was a bit like trying to squeeze hardwood.

 

Jones yowled angrily and punched him in the face. Each blow felt like being hit with a bowling ball and he raised his arms to block, feeling each punch all the way up his shoulders, trying to scramble on the floor away from her.

 

“Oh my god – Matt!!” a familiar voice cried, a blessed pause in the rain of pain. “Jessica-Jessica, stop hitting him! STOP!”

 

Claire, his angel of mercy, dragged her off his body by the arm. Jones did not resist, though there was no doubt in his mind that she wouldn’t be moved if she didn’t wish to be moved.

 

“You know this asshole?” Jones demanded. Matt was fairly certain she was glaring at him.

 

“You hit like a _semi_ ,” Matt groaned, struggling up to his feet. He managed with Claire’s assistance. He made a protesting noise when Claire yanked his cowl off to check his face. “Don’t-!”

 

“Shut up, she could’ve broken your cheekbone.” He hissed as she gently pressed a bruise on his jaw and quickly held his eyelids open to look for blood.

 

“What the fuck!” Jones exclaimed. “You’re blind!”

 

“I hadn’t noticed,” he said wryly, staggering toward the sofa Claire dragged him to.

 

“So, why is Matt the Blind Guy standing in my office like a creepy weirdo?” she asked. “And why the hell are you wearing fucking pajamas?”

 

The male voice, cagily shifting around Jessica as though he were trying to protect her, said “Holy shit, Jess, that’s Daredevil!”

 

“The dumb twat who does flips in front of police cameras?” she asked, sounding genuinely confused. Claire snorted out a laugh, but pats his shoulder as Matt gave a bleak little sigh. “Malcolm, stop hovering, I said it’s fine.”

 

“He hit you! Right over your ribs!” Malcolm said anxiously. “At least let Claire take a look.”

 

“He didn’t hit me, he _grabbed_ me,” Jessica said impatiently. “And _no_ , I told you not to call Claire – you’re a pain in my goddamn ass, you know that? Go get the duct tape and quit making constipated faces at me.”

 

Malcolm took that for the dismissal it was and walked away, grumbling under his breath.

 

“No, I’m glad he did call me,” Claire said in familiarly stern voice, hands on hips. “He told me you were thrown into a car at speed, Jessica. You could’ve fractured your pelvis.”

 

“She didn’t,” Matt said, before he was smart enough to stop himself.

 

“And how the hell do you know?” Jessica demanded.

 

The air moved as Claire gestured toward him. “Malcolm and Jessica have already seen your face and they know your name, Matt. You were the one who made this worse, now come over here and help me.”

 

“Claire, you’re a great nurse, but I don’t need nursing,” Jessica said flatly. “I told Malcolm he was only supposed to call you if he thinks I’m dying.”

 

For some reason, he suspected that Jessica’s eyes rolled when she said _dying_.

 

“Her ribs are cracked on the left side. Three of them. Nothing broken. A large cut on the back of her right leg, about…six inches long. The bleeding is started to slow down.” He reached out his hand and Jessica twitched away, but Matt did not touch her, simply let his hand hover near her body, briefly waving over her skin to feel the rise in temperature. “Bruising from the midthigh to midback, severe at the hips and buttocks on…both sides. And one minor graze at her…neck?”

 

“Under my jaw,” she corrected faintly. “…I have no idea how the blind man knows that, but that just proves my point – I’m not injured enough to need you.”

 

Matt turned to stare at the blazing image his eyes interpreted as her face, conveying with a look the total confusion at that statement. He was reckless – the newspapers called him _the man without fear_ , but everything about that sentence was _insane_. As shitty as he was about admitting when he was hurt, if he had injuries like that, he wouldn’t hesitate to call Claire.

 

To his further surprise, Claire gave a resigned little sigh and Malcolm handed Jessica the roll of duct tape, helping her unroll several long strips to keep her ribs bound up.

 

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Matt told Jessica sincerely, turning his head so that his eyes were roughly aimed at her face. He wasn’t terribly bothered by Claire stitching up the cut on his brow. “I only wanted to ask about the item you took off Turk Barrett two days ago. I wasn’t trying to attack you.”

 

She snorted. “You got a funny way of showin’ it. In my experience, people who stand in my apartment at night and wait for me in the dark aren’t here for a friendly chat.”

 

Matt brows gathered together. “Your _apartment_? Turk said this was your office.”

 

“It’s both,” she said shortly. “So why do you want the damn thing?”

 

He hesitates – too long, he can hear Claire’s heartrate tick upwards with anger. “Tell her everything, Matt. She knows your name and face, just tell her.”

 

“I’m a PI, I know when to use discretion,” Jessica drawled.

 

“Yeah, but what about your boyfriend?” Matt asked, jerking his head in Malcolm’s direction. The other man had moved in front of her, blocking Matt’s view (ha!) of Jessica’s body as she taped herself up. The idea that Malcolm could protect her when her fists could break a man’s ribs in one blow was laughable and Malcolm seemed aware of this. That didn’t stop him from doing it.

 

Jessica snorted and Malcolm let out a small laugh. “I’m definitely not her boyfriend. Jess, don’t take this the wrong way, but I like you too much to date you. If that makes sense.”

 

“I don’t know what it says about us that it kind of does, yeah,” she mumbled, yanking open a desk drawer and pulling out a bottle of bourbon. How much booze did this woman have stashed around this place? A sloshing sound told Matt that she took a large swallow. “So out with it, Devilboy. Whatcha got?”

 

Matt huffed out a calming breath, before beginning his tale. Claire continued to stich his eyebrow and wipe the blood from his face. Malcolm listened intently and Jessica’s silence was only punctuated by the swishing of the bourbon in her bottle. He didn’t offer further explanation of his extrasensory abilities or how he ended up becoming Daredevil – just the basics of how got here and why he really did _need_ that necklace. He also told her his full name.

 

“You’re a _lawyer_?” Jessica said, appalled, with the kind of loathing that could only mean she’d known someone in his profession before.

 

“Yes,” Matt replied firmly. “My partner and I mostly do pro bono defense work in Hell’s Kitchen. Bad landlords, wage theft, that kind of thing.”

 

“I liked you better when you were an asshole in red pajamas,” she said with evident distaste.

 

“It’s body armor,” he protested. Matt wondered who it was that made her so virulently despise lawyers – more than the average person already did anyway.

 

“Hm, yeah. But you still look like an asshole.” He could hear the amusement in her voice. “Alright, you check out. I was hired by Montenegro to fetch the necklace after his housekeeper stole it.”

 

Matt’s heart and hopes sank. “So you gave it back to him?”

 

“Oh Christ, no,” she said with a laugh that held no humor. “Everything about that shit-stain was fishy. Kept digging for some evidence on him, getting some clues about his real reason for tracking it down. Our Bart’s been a naughty boy.”

 

Matt leaned forward. “Tell me. I can help.”

 

Jessica made a considering noise in the back of her throat. The swish of her hair said that she was cocking her head. “Huh. I might believe you, Murdock.”

 

Before she left, Claire pulled him aside, out by the elevator. “Your dad, he was a boxer, right?”

 

“Uh, yeah,” he confirmed, still confused on what this conversation was about.

 

“Then let me give you a piece of advice in a way you’ll understand – try not to make an enemy of her, Matt. I promise, Jessica is above your weight class.”

 

“I wasn’t under the impression she was someone I need to stop,” he said, frowning. “Do I need to take her out?”

 

Claire’s voice startled him with its sudden volume. “ _DO NOT_ make that woman’s life any harder than it already is!” Lowering her voice, she whispered “As far as I can tell, she isn’t a threat to anyone generally not being a dick already.”

 

“Exactly how strong is she?” he asked, rubbing his shoulder where he was certain there were the imprints of her fingers.

 

“You know Luke Cage? Out in Harlem?” Claire drawled. Matt nodded. “A man with unbreakable skin and Jessica took him one on one in a fight. And won. I watched her lift him like a toddler.”

 

She sighed and Matt could see her head turn back to glance at the door at the end of the hallway. “She doesn’t live a double life the way you do, but she wants the same thing you do. She just wants to be left alone. Jessica is a rough woman whose had a rough life, Matt. Leave her to her misery and you won’t get any trouble from her, I promise.”

 

That night began the start of an incredibly strange…not partnership. What he did with Jessica wasn’t anything like what he did with Foggy and Karen. There wasn’t anything permanent, regular, or comfortable about their team-ups.

 

But if Foggy was especially worried about what he was getting himself into or Matt was planning on raiding a large hive of criminals, a bribe of several bottles of bourbon could get Jessica to help him out for the night. Malcolm was also surprisingly helpful, able to mend minor wounds without a call to Claire, and he was not at all judgmental about Matt’s…nighttime hobbies.

 

During their latest team-up though, their roles were sort of reversed. Daredevil didn’t need Jessica Jones – Jessica Jones needed Matt Murdock.

 

“Just to talk to them. You can do that weird thing with heartbeats and shit.” He heard her shrug. When she’s not drunk or pissed off, Jessica’s the picture of nonchalance. “Might come in handy.”

 

Hands twisting around his cane, Matt said “Could you…?” Jessica held still, the tilt of her head indicating something quizzical. “…guide me, maybe?”

 

Confused, she said “You’re the ninja master. Why?”

 

Mouth twisting unhappily, he said “I know, but it looks less unnatural if you’re guiding me.”

 

And of course, there’s the part he didn’t say, the part Stick would probably sneer at him for. He genuinely enjoyed the human contact, particularly with people he liked. Of course, Foggy was the superior choice because Foggy would idly describe the world around them, even now. But Jessica was okay, too.

 

He half-expected her to object more, but Jessica stopped and held out an elbow, her body leaning into his side briefly. Because he’s actually a moron, he blurted out “Jesus, you’re so little!” and then, embarrassed, immediately added “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I turn into a jerk around you. I’m not normally this big of an ass.”

 

Somehow, he was under the impression that when Jessica looked at him, she was always not-so-subtly judging him. “I’m known to have that effect on people, unfortunately. Are you telling me you didn’t already know my height and weight?”

 

“Not so much your height, that’s pretty easy for me to guess – I usually have a vague idea, but your…your pulse is very loud, and you tend to move like someone larger than yourself,” he admitted. “Between that and the force you put into your punches, my impression of you seems to be _very_ inaccurate.”

 

“Good to know,” she said breezily. Her grip on his arm doesn’t have any of Foggy’s relaxed ease, but she doesn’t bruise him or fail to tell him when they were stepping from a curb, either.

 

She smelled like a woman and whisky and the combination was…fucking him up a little bit. For the most part, to Matt, Jessica was less a sexual being and more a creature of the wild, full of fury and pain, which served to remind him of Claire’s warning. And a wild thing should not be trapped or broken in, so it was not terribly hard to keep that warning in mind.

 

With his lifestyle, Matt couldn’t possibly offer her more than a simple fuck and Jessica could get that anywhere. He was less sure that she’d be willing to accept friendship where she could get it, and he could offer that freely.

 

A wild thing, he was also reminded, had her own kind of cunning, one not found in books.

  
“It’s pretty simple,” the teenage daughter sneered. “My dad abandoned us and got himself killed.”

 

He heard Jessica give a weary sigh. She’s been up a long time, stayed up all night and into the morning so that she could grab him in daylight hours. “I know it’s probably hard to understand-”

 

“Actually it’s not,” the girl interrupted, bitterly.

 

“Your dad didn’t want to hurt you or your mother,” Jessica said quietly.

 

“Yeah, well, she cries herself to sleep every night now. So…”

 

Trying to steer her away from these grim thoughts, Matt asked “Did your dad have an office in the house?”

 

“No, he kept work and life separate,” she said. Her voice was aimed at the carpet. “Some good that did him.”

 

There was a pause in which Matt heard Jessica lick her lips the tiniest amount, the prelude to speech. “You know, you remind me of a friend of mine,” she said, nodding her head thoughtfully. “His dad was a boxer, who got in way over his head and got himself killed.”

 

Beside her, Matt went still. Her pulse was a thunderous sound in the spaces between each word.

 

“For a long time, my friend thought his dad abandoned him, too.” Her vocal quality was always a little hoarse, a little raspy, but there was a note of gentleness to it then that didn’t usually appear. “Until one day he learned the truth – that his dead was actually killed because he wanted to _stop_ being a criminal. Because he wanted his son to be proud of him.” She huffed a little, sheepishly, before resuming her sarcastic drawl. “Whatever, I’m just trying to say my friend’s dad was a good guy and maybe yours was, too.”

 

He could feel her gaze upon him, a soft, contrite silence falling over her. Matt nodded just the smallest amount. She did her research and it wasn’t meant to attack him – it was said to comfort Lexi…and perhaps comfort Matt, too.

 

That was thing with Jessica. She was sweet tempered as a rattlesnake woken from a nap, but when she cared, you felt it.

 

Which is why Matt felt like the world’s biggest asshole when he ended up fleeing a crime scene as she was getting arrested.

 

“I-I have to,” he hissed, whirling around in panic. “Jessica, I’d lose my license! Why aren’t you running?”

 

“Because I’m not the one hiding! I can’t run from the cops!”

 

“I’ll get you out of this, I swear!”

 

And as she watched Daredevil leap up onto a fire escape and flee into the night, Jessica’s voice echoed in the hushed night air, her throaty rasp becoming a harsh bark. “Next time I see you, I’m kicking your ass, Devilboy!!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This won't be following the Defenders storyline, but some of the Matt/Jessica interactions in it are just so fucking good that you might seem hints of them here and there.


	3. Addition

On the day Franklin Nelson meets Patricia Walker, it goes something like this…

 

“Marci.”

 

His ex-girlfriend resolutely ignored him, Starbucks cappuccino in hand, practically marching down the street as they both returned to work from their lunch hour.

 

“Marci, no.”

 

That got her to throw a look at him over her shoulder, a smug smile resting on her lips as she flipped her blond curls out of her way with a practiced toss of her head.

 

“Marci!”

 

“You and I both know you’re going, Foggy-Bear. Think of all the networking opportunities! I’m practically doing you a favor here!”

 

Foggy sighed. _Then why do I feel like a hog being led to the slaughterhouse? By the head butcher, no less_.

 

Marci had managed to land a position with Hogarth, Chao, and Benowitz after Landman and Zack all but folded beneath the enormous weight of the Wilson Fisk case. She liked it there, even if Jeri Hogarth was one of the biggest sharks in town.

 

As much as Foggy complained about leaving the comfortable salary at L and Z, he had to admit the idea of going back to their old ways of working made him a little ill. Even taking Healy’s case had felt dirty, but Matt later admitted he’d been trying to use the man to track down Fisk and get his name.

 

He was glad that Marci enjoyed her new job, he just didn’t understand why he had to suffer because of it.

 

Hogarth was throwing some kind of ultra-swank holiday party for the associates and Marci needed a date, since her now ex-boyfriend got pissy about Marci getting the job he wanted. She knew Foggy wouldn’t drink three glasses of punch and get handsy in front of her new bosses, so he was being roped in.

 

With another soft sigh, Foggy resigned himself to a night of wearing his only tux and returned to back to his beloved run down office.

 

The night of the party, Foggy’s apprehension returned threefold.

 

He had rules about Matt going around as Daredevil, rules to keep what remained of his sanity intact. If he was going indoors, Matt had to send a text about where he was and either Foggy or Karen needed to be standing by in case he got injured. Big raids required back-up in the form of Jessica Jones.

 

But that night, Karen was driving to Pennsylvania to visit her aunt and Foggy was supposed to be at this party with Marci.

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Matt told him, clapping him on the shoulder. “I don’t plan on doing anything major tonight, but why don’t I call Jessica anyway, just to give you some peace of mind?”

 

Matt would probably be able to tell that made his pulse slow down a little. “Yeah. Yeah, it does. Call her. Thanks, Matt.”

 

“ _Oh, no_ , I get to spend the night saving the city with a woman who can bench press a compact car,” he deadpanned.

 

Foggy pinched him on the arm. “Yeah, and I’ll bet that she’s crazy hot, too.”

 

Matt huffed at his accusatory tone. “I still have no idea how you think I could possibly know that.”

 

“I don’t know how you do it, it must be one of those extra sensors. You have ‘hot girl’ radar.”

 

Matt stared in Foggy’s direction expressionlessly for a moment before saying “I’ll pay you all the money in my savings account if you call her ‘hot girl’ to her face.”

 

“I thought you don’t know what she looks like?” he taunted.

 

“Oh, I don’t have to know anything about her appearance to understand what her reaction to that will be,” Matt said slyly.

 

“Well,” Foggy said pointedly. “First I’d have to _meet_ her, Matt.”

 

Matt tried – and failed – not to fidget. “It’s not that I don’t want you to,” he said finally. “You’d love her – she seems to think it’s her sacred duty to give me as much of a hard time as humanly possible. But I’m not sure…I think that would be too personal for her.”

 

Foggy laughed. “I love this. I love this so much. On top of finding the mythical being that is the one woman in New York you can’t seem to charm, she might even be more secretive and emotionally challenged than you are.”

 

Matt sighed. “I’m sure you’ll encounter her eventually, but I don’t want Jessica to feel like I’m trying to start something with her.”

 

That made Foggy raise an eyebrow, though he doesn’t telegraph a sound for Matt to interpret. ‘ _Aren’t you though_?’ he wanted to ask. But he wasn’t sure Matt even realized just how utterly fucking infatuated he sounded with Jessica Jones.

 

Foggy has never seen him react to a woman like that, not even with Elektra. Part of him tried to feel jealous, but he honestly couldn’t manage it when every night spent running through the city with Jessica made Matt come back happier than ever. And _unlike_ Elektra, killing people wouldn’t even occur to Jessica. “Yeah, yeah. Go suit up for your ‘date’, cowboy.”

 

Since Jessica didn’t strike Foggy as a woman who played coy and enjoyed games of cat-and-mouse, the way someone like Marci would, Foggy could only assume that either Matt was better at hiding his gigantic crush in Jessica’s presence, or she was just as emotionally oblivious as he was.

 

 _After all, I’ve been in love with him for eight years, and he’s never noticed_ that _._

 

Marci, that rotten liar, ditched him an hour into the party to start flirting with an accounting executive, leaving Foggy to wander around by himself in absolute mind-numbing boredom, dodging the swarm of people ready to suck out his soul.

 

Then he saw the very last person he ever expected to see, sitting on a bar stool two seats down from him and sipping Sprite with a small frown on her face.

 

“Holy shit, you’re Patricia Walker!”

\---

“Why aren’t you dressed yet?” Trish demanded, hanging her wet coat on the radiator and shaking the snowflakes from her hair. “Jess, the party is in an hour.”

 

“Change of plans,” her friend said casually. “You’re going alone tonight.”

 

Heart dropping slightly, Trish said “Yeah? You got a case?”

 

“Kinda.” Jess glanced at her meaningfully. “I gotta date.”

 

“A _date_ date or…” She stuck her fingers on either side of her head, creating miniature horns.

 

“Yep, that one.”

 

Immediately brightening, Trish said slyly “Oh? Another night on the town with your handsome devil?”

 

Just as she knew she would, Jess rolled her eyes. “I said he was pretty good looking _once_ , Trish. I don’t plan to marry the guy.”

 

“Oh, come on,” she complained, pouting a little because that worked on Jessica sometimes, but only when Trish did it. “You admit he’s cute, but you won’t let me meet him?”

 

“Yeah, Trish, _cute_. Like a puppy is cute, with sad eyes and a quivering tail. I don’t do ‘cute’,” Jessica said, scoffing a little as she donned her leather jacket – with a cotton hoodie underlayer because it was fucking cold outside. “We aren’t dating, we’re doing favors for each other. Besides being cute, he’s also very weird and very paranoid, so until there’s a reason for it, he’s not going near you.”

 

“You do remember that I don’t need protecting, right?” Trish said lightly, reaching out to squeeze her hand.

 

Jessica sighed, the aggravated kind of sigh that she knew was mostly for show. “Yeah, I know. Everybody in this town knows kung-fu but me.”

 

“Not that I don’t appreciate you looking out for me, but your devilish boyfriend seems like a pretty nice guy.”

 

“ _Nice_. That’s another thing I don’t do,” Jessica said darkly, ignoring the protesting noise Trish made behind her.

 

“He isn’t like me, Trish. I’m Jessica Jones 24/7/365. 366 on a leap year. During the day, he’s somebody else. Maybe Daredevil is cool hanging out with me at night, but that other person in the daytime wants to stay as far away from me as possible.” Jess couldn’t exactly blame Matt for that, either – she tended to wreck shit wherever she went, even when she wasn’t punching things. After a moment, the word ‘ _lawyer’_ popped into her head and Jess’s lip curled involuntarily. “The feeling is pretty mutual, actually.”

 

“Hey,” Trish said quietly, catching her friend by the hand before Jessica could stomp off into the night to scare the bejesus out of anything too dumb to get out of her way. _This would be the perfect time to kiss her_ , her brain said unhelpfully, staring up into Jess’s shifting blue-green eyes. “It’s okay, you know. I doubt he’s actually an angel beneath that mask, but he also isn’t…not every guy will be Kilgrave.”

 

She half-expected Jess to snarl at her for that, not entirely without blame, but instead she muttered “I know that. I just…can’t right now.” She put her gloves on and grabbed her keys from the desk. “Enjoy the party. I’m sure Hogarth will be delighted that you showed up without me.”

 

Trish watched her leave in painful, helpless silence. Jess had always been the more reserved one, the more cautious and distant of the two girls. Most people couldn’t see the truly big heart in her because they couldn’t get past the rough, angry exterior. It took time to get past her walls because Jess seemed to go through life assuming that once she let someone in, she was going to get hurt.

 

Trish hated that meeting Kilgrave had basically proven her right. He’d gotten into every single crevice and corner of her mind and used everything he’d learned there to torture her as effectively as possible.

 

Nothing was too precious or too sacred for him to sink his teeth into – Jess’s well-hidden desire to help people, her inability to stand back and watch them suffer, her outright reluctance to actively cause them pain, childhood memories both happy and sad, her brief but fervent feelings for Luke, her sympathy for Malcolm, even Jess’s connection to Trish herself. Nothing was off limits.

 

She hated even more that a tiny part of her was thrilled when Kilgrave said the only person Jess had ever truly loved was Trish.

 

She tried not to ask too much of her friend – that was part of the reason she’d gotten some Krav Maga training. Trish couldn’t keep getting Jess to save her when she was already…

 

Trish tried not to let it become too obvious that the feeling was not only mutual, it was more…intense than Jess would probably be comfortable with.

 

In a world where everyone else was given a wide berth, Trish just had to count herself lucky that Jess kept her within arm’s reach.

 

Daredevil was good for her. Even just thinking that, Trish had to quickly look around the room, expecting Jess to pop out and scowl at her at the very idea. But it was true, nonetheless.

 

Helping the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen kept Jess’s mind off of things, at least for a little while, and kept her sober more often. Malcolm, deeply amused by this, reported that Daredevil seemed to willingly make himself Jessica’s chew toy. “I don’t know how he does it,” he’d told Trish with a chuckle. “But that dude just walks into trouble every time with her. Roasting Daredevil is her new hobby. Poor guy.”

\---

She turned her head to smile politely at him. At least he didn’t call her Patsy. She supposed that calling her Trish did seem a little overfamiliar, but she was a celebrity and people seemed to think that gained them a license to be overfamiliar. “Oh, hello! Ah, it’s just Trish, please.”

 

“I-I’m uh, I’m Foggy Nelson.” He was nervous – not like ‘oh my god, I’m such a fan’ nervous, more like ‘oh, I’m talking to a pretty girl!’ nervous. It was a bit refreshing, honestly. In her experience, fans were harder to get away from if they became overbearing and they so often were.

 

“Foggy, that’s an unusual name,” she said, looking at him more closely. Hm. He didn’t look like one of Jeri’s associates, which already did wonders to warm her attitude toward him. That hair certainly would be frowned upon by her staff, even slicked back the way it was, especially in combination with his facial hair, as well-groomed as it was. Trish actually thought it looked quite fetching on him.

 

“Beats the hell out of ‘Franklin’,” he said bluntly, with a reflexive grimace, eyes glimmering with self-deprecating humor. Foggy glanced at the empty seats around her, the empty bar. “Not to sound like a creepy stalker, but…why are you at a lawyer’s holiday party all by yourself?”

 

Trish shrugs and smiles wryly. “I wasn’t supposed to be. Actually, I wasn’t even the one invited, but my date sort of had a work emergency come up at the last minute.” They all knew Jeri only invited Jessica to show off, to show the other guests that she could get Jess to hop when she said jump. She’s not sorry that Jess was called away at the last minute. “What about you?”

 

“Oh, I’m not here alone. At least not technically,” Foggy said cheerfully, gesturing to the blond woman in designer heels getting a little too familiar with a man at least two decades older. He rolled his eyes, unbothered by the display. “Had an ex-girlfriend phone in a favor.”

 

Trish can’t quite resist the urge to wrinkle her nose. The woman is all bottle blonde hair and truly unfortunate spray-tan. _Killer_ taste in shoes, though. “Mister Nelson – Foggy – I hate to say this, but I don’t think you have very good taste in women.”

 

Foggy let out a laugh, a full warm sound that brought the unexpected prickle of a blush to her face – thought Trish couldn’t think why. “I promise, she’s isn’t quite as heartless as she looks. But yeah, college was rough, man.”

 

She grinned at him then, not the carefully polished smile on posters throughout the city, no. It was the grin of a misbehaving schoolgirl, candid and daring, and it made Foggy’s heart give a little flutter in his chest. “I bet you had fun though, right?”

 

“Oh absolutely,” he agreed, clinking his glass against hers in a toast. With a chuckle, he added, “Even the parts that are blurry now.”

 

“What did you go to school for?”

 

“Law. I’m a lawyer.” Another reflexive grimace. “Not one of these lawyers. My partner and I have a tiny office in the Kitchen, and it’s just the two of us and our secretary in a room with a fax machine from the nineties. Nothing like this.”

 

“I don’t know,” Trish said archly. “At least that sounds like it has charm.”

 

He paused and then smiled at her. “You know what? It does, actually. And the company can’t be beat.”

 

Trish looked at her lap and her own smile became a bit more cynical. “Some things are worth prioritizing over money.” She wished Dorothy had prioritized her daughter’s happiness and wellbeing over money or fame. She wished that she’d gotten to spend more time with Jessica, or even just in school like any other child, rather than on casting couches and make-up trailers. But that was part of the past now. “I know that’s probably hypocritical of me to say.”

 

“Not at all,” he said thoughtfully. His eyes seemed to take in more of her than he let on. Trish found she wasn’t uncomfortable with it. Foggy Nelson was a man with keen eyes, but there was nothing predatory in them. “You’d probably know about that better than anyone.”

 

She raised her glass. “To good priorities, Mister Nelson.”

 

“To good priorities, Missus Walker,” he agreed, eyes gleaming.

 

Trish knew what this was – she wasn’t stupid. The flirtation felt…good, somehow. Almost innocent and oddly refreshing, like having a glass of water to drink on a very hot day.

 

He wasn’t anything like the men she usually dated. Then again, the men she dated were usually _awful_ – Simpson was very much the rule and not the exception, in many ways. As much as Jess complained about them, Trish was well aware of that. The problem was that she already knew she wouldn’t be getting what she wanted (Jess), so she often picked something as far from that as she could get.

 

Jessica wasn’t good at showing it, but she was incredibly devoted to the people she became attached to, so Trish selected men who were freer with their affection but rather careless with it, too. Jessica had a clever mind and a cleverer mouth on her, and while she wouldn’t say her dates were dull-minded, they also could never hope to match Jess’s sharp wits. Jess didn’t do flattery and wouldn’t accept it either, while Trish’s partners often had plenty of one-liners close at hand and were always ready to preen for compliments.

 

Foggy, on the other hand, was delighted. He was trying not to be obvious in his eagerness, too happy with speaking to her.

 

God knew that he loved Matt – he loved Matt a little more than was healthy for his wellbeing, truth be told – but any woman who set eyes on him never gave Foggy so much as a second glance. He’d even been on literal dates with girls who’d been introduced to Matt, spoken with him for less than ten minutes and lost all interest in him.

 

And it was impossible to really get angry with him when he could tell that Matt _hated_ it, hated the attention from total strangers who would stand too close to him wearing heavy perfume and speaking too loudly, as though Matt were hard of hearing as well as blind when Foggy knew nothing could be further from the truth – and all that was _before_ he knew about the super senses.

 

But it was nice being able to speak to a beautiful woman without Matt there to suck all the air out of the room, and it had Foggy feeling excited and lucky in way he hadn’t since the day Matthew Murdock walked into his room in freshman year. He didn’t know if this was going to lead to more, but he would never say no to the opportunity to have one more clever, good-looking friend in his life.

 

Foggy has seen “It’s Patsy” before, and occasionally Matt liked listening to ‘Trish Talk’ – “Seriously, I have no idea what she looks like, Fogs. I just find her voice soothing, alright?” But none of those showed what a nice person Trish Walker was, or how honestly funny she was. None of them could show how sincerely passionate she was about subjects that interested her or how she gestured gracefully with her hands as she spoke.

 

“And I really, really wanna meet Madeleine Albright!” she finished with a frustrated little moan. “But they say my listeners don’t tune into politics because I have a pop culture show!”

 

“The exact opposite, actually,” Foggy confessed with a little chuckle. “My friend – my business partner, actually – he can’t really watch television because he’s blind, but he enjoys the radio and he loves your serious stuff the most. I tease him all the time about having a celebrity crush on you and he keeps insisting that he just likes the sound of your voice. But he’s a total nerd, so I’m not sure that helps.”

 

She shrugged and laughed. “Hey, at least I know someone’s listening.”

 

“Two someones, even.” His phone rang, a special tone that he only kept for the burner phone Matt used as Daredevil. With a painful jolt of worry, he smoothly said “Sorry, I have to take this one. I’ll be back.”

 

“I’ll wait for you,” Trish promised with a smile, and was surprised to find that she really meant it.

 

He holed himself in the bathroom and locked the door before answering it. “Talk to me, buddy. What’s going on?”

 

His heart beats, hard and painful in his chest as Matt’s voice comes through the phone. “Oh god, help. Foggy, please help me,” he gasped, panicked. “I screwed up, Foggy, I screwed this up so bad.”

 

“Okay, um, okay just take a breath and tell me what happened.” He paced the whole length of the tile, nervously running a hand through his hair and unintentionally musing it up.

 

“I left her there,” Matt said, nearly sobbing the words, sounding scared and frantic. “Foggy, I just _fucking left her_.”


	4. Subtraction

On the day that Jessica Jones meets Franklin Nelson, it goes something like this…

 

“Okay, Matt, just-I need you slow down,” Foggy said into the phone, sliding down the wall and feeling a knot of dread build in his stomach. “Slow down and explain to me – who did you leave and where?”

 

“ _Jessica_ ,” Matt panted, barely slowing down at all, the ass. “The police showed up while we were trying to tie up a group of people running an underground dog-fighting ring and I ran away from the scene.”

 

“That’s what you’re supposed to do,” Foggy pointed out gently. “Getting caught and arrested as the double D will end with you being disbarred and thrown in jail, Matt. And _then_ probably assassinated. We’ve talked about this.”

 

“I know that, which is why I _left her_ ,” Matt hissed, furious with himself, “To be arrested in a back alley, Foggy.”

 

“So, Jessica was taken in?”

 

“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you! I just left her there!”

 

Oh. Suddenly, Foggy realized why Matt was so fucking upset, almost hysterical, in a way he’s never seen before.

 

His whole childhood – his whole life, really – was a series of people Matt cared about who, in some way or another, always ended up abandoning him. If he were being brutally honest, Foggy would have to say he’s been one of them, but he did the unprecedented action of coming right back, because he was hopelessly in love with Matt and maybe also because he was a little bit brain damaged. He doesn’t say it, he doesn’t like to talk about it, but Foggy has realized over the years that Matt has been conditioned to assume that becoming attached to someone means that leaving him is an inevitable conclusion of that attachment.

 

And Matt felt like he’d just done that to someone else. Matt, ever ready to feel guilty and ashamed of himself, was tormenting himself for walking away from someone who’d trusted him. Part of him also had to be certain that this would lead to Jessica writing him off for good, being yet one more person who decided he wasn’t worth their time and effort.

 

Jesus, no wonder he was nearly hysterical. His best friend had actually stepped on one of his own emotional landmines.

 

“Okay, I’m going down to the station – do you think they’d be able to legally charge her with anything?”

 

“Assault?”

 

“Nah, I can argue she was making a citizen’s arrest. Calm down, finish your patrol, I’m on my way to the station right now.”

 

“Thanks, buddy.”

 

Foggy sighed as soon as the call cut off, banging his head back against the door. Now he just had to go and say goodbye to the very beautiful woman he’d been talking to and getting along with for nearly an hour. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that no, Matt was not a telepath, and could not possibly know how well he’d managed to cockblock him that night.

 

Matt had never expressed anything beyond polite interest in Foggy’s romantic interests, other than Marci, whose attitude about the justice system generated a cool, hard-edged civility from him that usually only showed up in the courtroom and that Foggy had found both terrifying and weirdly arousing. Which might explain why they dated for over a year when everything after the first three months had mostly been about the sex.

 

(It was damn good sex, too, but not quite good enough to make him forget that someday, his soft and deceptively squishy heart was going to collide head-on with Marci’s stone cold ambition and that was going to be messy for everybody involved. Foggy got the hell out before he could talk himself into doing something monumentally stupid, like propose to her and end up in an ill-advised marriage. Marci might be the sexiest, funniest, smartest person he’d ever dated but he was more than aware that those were also traits that she shared with Matt, and Marci wouldn’t be satisfied with him until he’d managed to surgically remove his soul and sell it on eBay.)

 

Trish – to his secret pleasure – seemed disappointed by his exit, but wasn’t mean about him leaving. “I’m sorry, but my law partner needs my help,” he told her, perfectly honest. “I’ve got to meet a client. I’d love to meet you in daytime, at a place less likely to remove our hearts from our chest cavities.”

 

He’d written his number on a napkin, the Nelson and Murdock specialty. He had no expectation that she would actually call him.

 

Probably because he couldn’t see Trish grinning at the napkin as he walked away, chuckling to herself and shaking her head. “Foggy P. Nelson – Avocado at Law.”

 

Jess and both of the officers looked up as the man in the suit entered the room. Her resting scowl didn’t exactly deepen, it just became colored with a little more confusion. “Okay, we’re done here.”

 

“Who the hell are you?”

 

“Foggy Nelson, of Nelson and Murdock,” the man in the tux said smoothly, twitching the tails of the suit back before taking a seat across from Jessica at the table, blue eyes twinkling at her in some secret joke.

 

At the word ‘Murdock’, Foggy saw her face twitch and let himself smile a little slyly. _That’s right, you know who sent me. He wouldn’t leave you hanging_.

 

“I’m Miss Jones’ attorney, and anything else you say to her will be said with me in the room,” he said, smiling like butter would not melt in his mouth. He stared at the cuffs on her wrists and after a moment, pitched a fit just as he had with Karen. “I don’t really think that’s necessary, do you?”

 

“Sir,” the younger officer said – he looked barely old enough to have graduated from the academy – “Do you realize who this woman is?”

 

“I’m very aware,” Foggy said, his smile growing significantly less good-humored by the second, though his voice was no less cheerful. “And I promise, if she intended to resist arrest, you wouldn’t even have been able to get those on her. Did she resist arrest, Officer…Hopkins?”

 

“No, but she-”

 

“Uncuff my client, please.” Jessica was almost impressed. Nelson was a rather soft-looking man, with a rather soft-looking smile, but his voice certainly wasn’t. _Well, well, Murdock. Seems like you aren’t the only one with some tricks up your sleeve_. “You and I both know those won’t stop her if she really wants to get out of them.”

 

They did uncuff Jessica but insisted on asking her more questions.

 

“Just tell us what you know,” the police officer asked in frustration. “Daredevil was spotted fleeing the scene of your arrest.”

 

Foggy’s smile became something less friendly. All he could really do was hope that Jessica was as loyal to Matt as he was to her.

 

Jessica made her eyes round and dumb in a way Foggy instantly knew could not possibly be a real facial expression for her. It actually kind of worked on her, too – especially with the right side of her face smeared in blood that way. “Huh?”

 

“But you were _seen_ there with the Daredevil.”

 

“Yep.” She popped the ‘p’ obnoxiously and kept staring at them blankly.

 

Foggy could honestly kiss her. Of course, then there was the small problem of her potentially breaking in his face, but he had such a high appreciation for that level of sass that he might be willing to risk it. Marci Stahl, eat your tiny little heart out.

 

Grinding his teeth, the officer on the left growled “You’ve been spotted with this man several times.”

 

“Is it a man?” she asked with mock surprise. “Can’t really tell with the bondage gear pajamas on.”

 

A vein visibly throbbed in the other man’s temple. Foggy tried manfully not to burst into inappropriate laughter. “Daredevil has been measured just below six feet tall and is approximately one-hundred and eighty pounds, Miss Jones. Are you telling me you believe this could be a woman?”

 

She shrugged. “I mean, they’re only an about an inch or two taller than me. It’s the 21st Century, man – maybe some bodybuilder chick got a hobby.”

 

He was going to describe this exchange to Matt later. In excruciating detail. With every inch of glee that it deserved.

 

“You’re seriously telling me you don’t have any idea who this person is?” the older cop demanded in clear disbelief.

 

“Nope, never showed me his face. He’s a shifty little bastard,” she said.

 

“So you do admit that Daredevil is male?”

 

She scoffed. “Of course he is, have you seen the stubble on that guy? Probably uses a voice-changer though, because that voice is _ridiculous_.”

 

“I can charge you for obstructing justice!” he barked.

 

“Bullshit,” Nelson interjected calmly, and Jessica was actually kind of impressed. “She’s already told you she’s never seen his face.”

 

“She could’ve stopped him! She had the chance to stop him multiple times!”

 

“I wasn’t aware that was her job, Officer Wilkes. In fact, I’ve gotten the impression that you frown upon that sort of thing,” he countered, leaning back with a satisfied smirk. “If you don’t have anything to charge her with, why don’t you excuse me, I’d like to speak with my client, alone.”

 

As the door to interrogation closed, Foggy got the distinct impression that Jessica was sizing him up. (He was right.) He did wonder what she saw – not in like, a superpower way, not in the way Matt ‘sees’. Matt told him that Jessica’s powers were physical only, but she was very good at reading people in an ordinary sense.

 

For himself, Jessica is both exactly as Matt described and nothing like he was picturing, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was expecting. For one thing, she’d been accurate with her height relative to Matt. Jessica was about his own height, but Foggy would bet money she was only around half his weight. If Matt hadn’t been the one to insist that she could lift small cars by herself, Foggy would never have believed it after seeing her in person.

 

Her pale skin, jet-black hair, and the dark cycles around her eyes – half smeared eyeliner and half shadows of hard, sleepless nights – made her look like a particularly savage and particularly grumpy raccoon.

 

Jessica took her time studying Nelson.

 

A very nice tuxedo, like he’d been in the middle of a special event when Murdock called him – and Murdock had to have called him, he couldn’t have known she was here any other way. The tux was well-cared for, but just a bite outdated. She wanted to know what Murdock said that got him to leave his event for her.

 

Yeah, a soft man. With neat careful hands and a gentle resting expression, but his eyes were keen and smart. Jessica was used to Jeri’s brand of smart, calculated as the Devil’s own personal accountant and cold as a night spent in outer Siberia. Nelson’s eyes were more like a hawk’s, sharp but bright and lively. They met her own gaze steadily, unafraid but not arrogant or challenging.

 

“Something the matter?” Jessica also wondered what Murdock told Nelson to make his voice so warm toward her. Oh. Maybe it was about that time she stopped a nail gun from being used on Daredevil. Well, on Daredevil’s _skull_ , to be more accurate.

 

She murmured “It’s nice to know one of you has common sense, Nelson. I just wish it was the one I usually get stuck with.”

 

“Foggy, please. Seriously, I have six hundred cousins, and no one calls me Franklin unless they really hate me.” He smiled at her, easy and serene. Maybe Nelson was just that friendly to everyone. “Oh, he has it. It’s just…y’know. More selective.”

 

“Yeah, well… in the future, I wish he’d _select_ to use it when someone is tryin’ to give me a root canal with a blowtorch,” Jess said dryly.

 

Eyes rounding, Foggy said “Dear lord, that didn’t actually happen, did it?”

 

She smirked and pointed at the blood smeared on her face like a warrior-queen’s battle paint. “I objected to oral surgery. Very strongly.”

 

He swallowed. “Good to know,” he said, regaining some of his humor. He glanced at Jessica, at the beat-up boots and torn jeans, at her exhausted, weary eyes beneath the blood coating her cheek. Just like Matt’s eyes, Foggy couldn’t tell exactly what color they were. His were always sliding between green and brown, highlighted sometimes by an occasional strike of gold. Hers were shifting easily between blue, blue-green, and hazel. “You ever drank an eel, Jessica?”

 

Her brows lifted. “Is that some kind of euphemism?”

 

Outright grinning now, he said “Nope. Matt might’ve been a shitty date, but how about I make it up to you. How do you feel about cheap booze and _shockingly_ filthy bars?”

 

“Oh, thank fuck,” Jessica said, standing up and grabbing her jacket from the back of the chair. She was somehow even tinier standing up. Foggy was a bit hefty around the middle, but he was by no means a large-framed man and he was pretty sure if he grabbed Jessica around the waist, he could still make his fingertips touch. “Murdock isn’t a bad guy, but he’s also the least relaxed human being I’ve ever met and I’ve met me. Seeing him reminds me of how often I don’t ever exercise, and on top of that, he’s filled with Jesus and anger.”

 

Foggy had to hold back tears of laughter as he held the door open for her. “I’m submitting a formal request to get that on a t-shirt, please.”

 

“Yeah?” This guy was about as far from Murdock personality-wise as she and Trish probably were. “How did you guys meet?”

 

“We were college roommates at Columbia, freshman year.”

 

Jessica blinked. “Shit. I might owe _you_ a drink, Nelson.”


	5. Multiplication

On the day Patricia Walker meets Matthew Murdock, it goes something like this…

 

It’s not everyday that Foggy can say he got plastered with a superhero, but that night he did. (Matt definitely Does Not Count – he knew the man before he put on the horns and the man beneath the demon was a hardcore dork.)

 

Staring at Jessica with a mixture of fear and admiration as Josie put down another bottle, he asked “How are you not falling off your chair right now?”

 

“Practice,” she smirked. Dryly, she added the same answer she’d given Luke. “I don’t get asked on a lot of second dates.”

 

“Then your dates are _wusses_ ,” he slurred, outraged. “You’re _the bomb_.”

 

That actually surprised a cackle out of Jessica. She had a nice voice, husky and dark, the way Foggy was certain suede would sound if it were a noise rather than a texture. He wondered if that was another one of the reasons Matt liked her. “I’ll make sure to tell them I’ve been endorsed by my lawyer.”

 

“Damn straight,” he hiccupped. “Plus, you’re like – fucking gorgeous, dude. I don’t know how a blind man always manages to locate the hottest chick in a five block radius and attach himself to her, but Matthew fucking Murdock does it every time.”

 

Jessica snorted. “Because he’s a disaster come to life and given human form?”

 

“ _Yes_!” he exclaimed, amazed to find another person in Hell’s Kitchen who understood this as well as he did. Drunkenly, he giggled and said, “I think you’re the only woman he’s ever encountered he can’t charm into liking him.”

 

“Oh, I like Murdock just fine,” she said placidly, “But I also understand that he’s completely and utterly full of shit, at all times. I don’t think he can help himself.”

 

Foggy howled with laughter, long enough that Josie glared at him darkly. Wheezing, he clanked their glasses together in a toast.

 

Jessica generally eschewed company and conversation, even when she elected to drink in the bar rather than drinking at home. Mostly, if she was honest, that was because she wasn’t much of a conversationalist. She wasn’t good at small talk, she didn’t have the patience for the flirtations of pick-up artists, and she knew that she could be…Trish would say ‘intense’, up close.

 

She knew that was just a nice way of saying that she was a bit of an asshole, even at the best of times. And the best of times was long gone for her, but Trish wore rose-colored glasses when it came to her, and Jess knew it. She’d never admit that Jess was a fuck-up, no matter how much evidence was piled in front of her.

 

In quiet moments, Jess was grateful for that, for that one piece of absolute faith that Trish never lost. It hurt, but it was the only thing that kept her going.

 

But Foggy spoke enough for both of them, didn’t seem to mind that Jessica didn’t have a lot to say, filling the silence with funny stories, designed to startle more smiles and chuckles out of her. He was pretty happy with his level of success, too.

 

At some point, Josie informed them it was time for them to get the fuck out of her bar, and they were both _extremely_ drunk. Foggy swore loudly about the cold and howled into the night about his ‘mighty eel strength’.

 

Jessica’s peels of startled drunken laughter bounced off the buildings, echoing in the empty city streets and playing back the sound like a beautiful song, and it made Foggy grin wildly to himself. It was dark and hoarse and musical, and far more potent than drinking the eel.

 

He hadn’t touched her the whole night – flirted, sure, in a way that Jess suspected he flirted with everyone – but out on the street, Foggy lifted her hand and settled it at his elbow. Jess resisted her urge to break his fingers. Not that she wanted to break his fingers, it was just her first impulse.

 

It was a strangely formal and old-fashioned gesture and it took a moment for her inebriated brain to realize that it was probably the same way he walked with Matt.

 

It was…nice? She was not a blind (male) lawyer, but it was nice to be treated like, well Foggy’s version of normal, instead of being treated like a broken victim or a dangerous violent psychopath. Or, if your name was Jeri Hogarth, some weird combination of the two.

 

They shambled back to Jessica’s, arm in arm, where Foggy insisted that they switch to water (“Whyyyyy?”) and he described, in glorious detail, meeting Karen and gaining a secretary. And since Jessica was In The Know, he could even add the cool parts where Matt saved Karen’s life.

 

Jessica, apparently inspired by his antics, countered with a story of accompanying the family who adopted her on a ski trip to Aspen, which ended in her and her adoptive sister trying to sneak back into the hotel room wearing only towels from the hotel pool and vodka vapors.

 

She never said Trish’s name – that was an early lesson learned when she went to live with the Walkers. She didn’t tell anyone who her ‘sister’ was. It was a recipe for gossip-mongers and celebrity chasers. Kilgrave only discovered Trish’s name because of Jessica’s forced compliance with his orders.

 

At three in the morning, she dug cold pizza and coke from her new(ish) fridge, and they ate it covered in hot sauce while Foggy taught her that he was an absolute _boss_ at poker. At some point, they both fell asleep, but…

 

Things get kind of fuzzy after that.

\---

When Foggy told him he was taking Jessica to Josie’s for a drink, Matt did not argue the morality of taking an alcoholic with PTSD to a bar. For one thing, Foggy would have a very shouty-whisper counterargument about the morality of running around rooftops and putting people in the hospital. For another, Matt knew Jess by now. If she didn’t drink beside Foggy in Josie’s bar, she would drink alone in her apartment, probably in the dark.

 

That being said, this was…unexpected.

 

To say the least.

 

It was enough of a surprise to realize that Foggy was in Jess’s apartment, his heartbeat nearly obscured by the clanging of hers, the opposite rhythms his only clue that there are two people there instead of one.

 

He thought he had to be mistaken about his impression that they were sleeping in the same bed and Matt was only half right. They were sleeping on the same _couch_.

 

Lifting himself through the window, Matt dropped down and paced the floor behind Jessica’s desk, trying to process the information his senses were giving him.

 

“Um…”

 

Their scents were mingled together, yeasty with booze and human sweat, cheese and hot sauce on their fingertips. From Jessica, leather and blood and the sweet smell of her clean hair. From Foggy, beard oil and his nicest cologne, smooth and piney. It was…it was _good_.

 

It gave Matt a peculiar feeling, a strange urge to wriggle between them and rub his face against the places he knew the smell would be strongest, in Jess and Foggy’s hair, their necks, the softest skin at their lower bellies and between-

 

Matt jerked his head, shaking himself. Those thoughts were astonishingly inappropriate, even for him, and wouldn’t serve his sanity well.

 

What the two of them _don’t_ smell like is sex, though, that combination of human pheromones that’s especially hard to wash away, particularly for females, whose evidence tends to soak into their-

 

 _STOP_ , he commanded himself, internally snarling. It was harder to tell himself no when their hearts and scents were so relaxed, so content, as though they were just waiting for him-

 

Jessica’s phone vibrated wildly on the desk in front of him, pulling Matt out of his increasingly unwelcome thoughts. The women in question was dead to the world, not stirring at all in her slumber as the phone rang. Hovering uncertainly, he debated waking her or not and how likely Foggy was to lose his life if he did and settled on letting the caller just go to voicemail.

 

But the caller was either concerned or angry, because less than thirty seconds after the first one, the phone rang again.

 

Jessica was still unmoving on the sofa, giving an odd noise that Matt would not dare to say was a whimper and turning her face into Foggy’s shoulder. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d missed his sense of sight this badly, because he would’ve given a lot to be able to see what that looked like in sharper detail, rather than the blurry figures set ablaze he had to contend with.

 

Biting the bullet, Matt swiped what he hoped was the ‘answer call’ button – touch screens were his longtime nemesis – and cautiously greeted, “Jessica Jones.”

 

There is a long, long silence before an unexpectedly familiar voice asked “…is this the Devil speaking?”

 

Matt gazed in sightless disbelief at the smartphone. Was that Trish Walker? How the hell did _Trish Walker_ know Jessica worked with Daredevil? Maybe she was a client? “…Jessica can’t come to the phone,” he said lowly, refusing to confirm or deny her question. “Can I take a message?”

 

Muffled, probably not intended for him to hear, he heard Trish mutter to herself, “Fucking _Daredevil_ – Jesus, Jess…” before she said at a normal volume “Ho-I was told she was arrested and released last night. She was with you, right? She told me she was with you. Is she-is she okay? Did she get hurt?”

 

No, Patricia Walker was more than a client. She sounded concerned and a little frightened. Worried for her. And Jessica had told her she was with him last night. “She wasn’t hurt. She’s at home resting, Miss Walker,” he answered, trying his best to sound sincere and soothing. He repeated, “Can I give her a message?”

 

There was a long pause, where Matt could hear Trish take several deep, controlled breaths. He wondered if she was trying to stave off a panic attack. Maybe she was just into meditation. Quietly, Trish said “No, that’s okay. I can…I can ask Malcolm to check on her. I’m sure you have other things to do.”

 

She had gone straight to the assumption that Jessica drank herself unconscious, and Trish knew all of the players in Jess’s life, but Jessica had never mentioned knowing Trish Walker. That made Matt more certain than anything that she was important to Jess – important enough that she was trying to protect Trish from being associated with her own name and reputation.

 

It was before noon on a Saturday – the office wouldn’t be open, and he couldn’t go out in the suit for hours yet.

 

“Jessica is my partner, Miss Walker,” Matt said finally, turning his head to breathe them in again, guiltily. Foggy’s breathing so regular and steady, and Jessica’s heart, so powerful and strong. “I don’t consider it an imposition.”

 

Another muffled sound, ragged and short, like a dry sob, her head turned away from the phone. She had no way of knowing he would hear her anyway. Matt’s chest tightened painfully in sympathy and he wondered if… no, he _knew_ that Trish was accustomed to watching other people judge Jessica’s life, sneer at the wreckage, and self-righteously stride away from it.

 

There are a few more deep breathing exercises. “I’m, um, I’m gonna owe you a drink or something – Devil’s Food cake, maybe?”

 

“I never say no to chocolate,” Matt agreed, smiling silently at her valiant attempt at a joke. “But I promise, you owe me nothing. Goodbye, Miss Walker.”

 

He heard her faint “goodbye”, before the line went dead.

 

Which still left Matt not knowing what he should do with the situation before him. He found Foggy’s jacket hanging over Jess’s desk chair, playing cards still scattered over the surface of the desk itself, and the sickly sweet smell of cola coming from the mostly empty cups, as well as stale pizza coming from the open boxes. At least he could be certain they’d had more to drink than whiskey the whole night.

 

Softly, with barely enough breath to get the words out, so that only someone of Matt’s extraordinary hearing could perceive it, Foggy whispered “ _Matt_.”

 

“So. You…ah…you seem to really get along with Jessica.” His face couldn’t seem to decide whether he should be laughing at his friend or disapproving. “I’m not sure if I should be impressed or scared for you.”

 

“I have absolutely no idea how she got here,” he hissed. Foggy didn’t want Matt thinking he was making a move on his girl. Matt’s face did something complicated before he settled with snickering at him. “I’m serious, dude! We played poker until the sun was almost up, and she went to sleep in her own bed!”

 

There was a long pause where he can tell Foggy wanted to say something else and was rewarded for his patience when his friend said, “It feels so wrong to say this, but Jess is really fucking cute right now.”

 

“Yeah?” Matt’s face softened into a fond smile. Jesus, he was so smitten. And with the woman in question draped across his chest, her slender fingers twisted into his undershirt, Foggy wasn’t sure who he was supposed to be jealous of there.  

 

“Think Snow White, but she wears a lot of leather.”

 

“Um, Fog-”

 

“You’re a dead man, Nelson,” Jess croaked, pushing herself up from his chest. “And quit bullshitting Murdock. I’m more like Maleficent, but more leather and less robes.”

 

“What about the horns?” Matt said, chuckling, reaching out to steady her as she shakily pulled herself off the couch. His hand brushed her leg by accident, softly scraping his scarred knuckles against bare skin. Not wearing pants, she wasn’t wearing pants.

 

“You took care of that part,” she drawled, giving him one of those judgmental Looks.

 

“Wanna tell me how you became my blanket sometime this morning?” Foggy asked lightly.

 

“Had to pee, didn’t remember you were there,” she grumbled, stumbling off to the bathroom.

 

 _Lie_. She might as well have just said it out loud in Matt’s presence, because her roaring heart said it for her. _I’m a liar, liar, liar_.

 

Jess went straight to the shower stall and cranked both taps on full blast – she didn’t want the temperature, she wanted the pressure bearing down on her. She couldn’t think of a way to explain this, even to herself.

 

She’d gone to sleep, full of laughter and pizza and mighty eel strength. But when Jess closed her eyes, he waiting for her. He was always waiting for her.

 

Whispering to her, _touching_ her.

 

She bolted up from complete unconsciousness, the feeling of his tongue on her skin making Jess break out in cold sweats. She’d been shaking, shuddering so violently she could barely walk. Normally she’d drink more, numb it deeper, or go out and find something to do, but she was in no condition to go outside and the whiskey was helping less and less.

 

Couldn’t get back in bed, the sheets felt wet with blood no matter how many times she checked. She stumbled onto the couch without even thinking about Foggy in it, surprised to find another body already on the space.

 

But the body smelled like the woods where she’d gone camping as a child, and he breathed steadily. Too short and soft to be…anyone else. Had to be shaped like a Foggy. Yielding just a little beneath her while she was sick and hurt and broken, like the softness of him could cushion her bones, which felt so sharp and hard in her skin. Aching, and cold, like someone who walked perpetually within a blizzard. But he was soft, and he was warm. All of it formed a picture, instinctive and automatic even while half-conscious.

 

S _afe, safe, safe_.

 

She closed her eyes.

 

Even now Jess was amazed she’d fallen back to sleep.

 

When they heard the shower turn on, Foggy quietly said “Does she usually lie to you?”

 

That more than anything would always be a point of contention for Foggy – they reached an agreement that Matt was never to lie to him, but if he was really _truly_ concerned about Foggy having information that would endanger him, he was allowed to simply say “I’d rather not tell you that” without consequences.

 

“No, she doesn’t,” Matt murmured thoughtfully. Jessica was not like Matt. If she didn’t want to answer your question, she would sidestep or simply refuse to answer. An outright lie wasn’t her style. That she would for do it for such a petty thing, knowing he would be able to call her out, could only mean it was a question she found uncomfortably personal. “I think she had a nightmare.”

 

“A nightmare?”

 

He didn’t know how much of Jessica’s file he had a chance to read before arriving at the station. He’d left some information in the office, knowing that one day they’d likely end up on one side of an interrogation table with Jessica and the police on the other. “…do you recognize the name ‘Kilgrave’?”

 

Foggy didn’t need to answer verbally – the way his fists clenched and his heart slammed against his sternum was enough of an answer. “Son of a _bitch_.”

 

“Yeah. Friendly tip: do not _ever_ say that name around her,” Matt said gravely. “As hard as she tries to pretend it’s only in the past, it’s…it’s a wound you can’t see, that she can’t close up.”

 

“Don’t stab her where she’s already bleeding,” Foggy said, with a tight nod. “I think I can manage that, yeah.”

 

Again, Matt’s face softened with affection, this time directly at Foggy. “I know you can.”

\---

Jess watched Trish stare at three pairs of shoes, arms across her chest. “Going out with the lawyer again?”

 

Trish’s nose wrinkled at the way she always said ‘lawyer’, like it left a bad taste in her mouth. In was a sentiment she normally understood, but Foggy was just _lovely_. Charming, sweet, funny, handsome but not in that weird macho way… “Yes, I’m going out with that lawyer again. Try not to sound so excited, Jess.”

 

“I want to meet him,” Jess said, with the stubborn set to her jaw that meant she would not be taking ‘no’ for an answer.

 

She sighed, staring at her through the mirror. “Jessica…”

 

“It’s the third date, I want to meet him.”

 

“You wanna scare him,” Trish muttered as she applied mascara to her eyelashes, but they both knew that wasn’t the same as telling her no.

 

“Fear is healthy in a man,” Jess replied coldly, with an undertone of weary bitterness Trish would never call her out on. “Five minutes, Trish. Do you really want to keep a guy who can’t stand being around me less than five minutes?”

 

 _I can’t keep a guy who can’t stand you_ , Trish thought sadly. How do you ignore the strongest, bravest parts of yourself? “Fine. Five minutes.”

 

An hour later, across Manhattan, Foggy had a similar argument. “I just want to say hello, I promise I’ll leave you alone after – you keep gushing about how great she is, and it’s not every day you have coffee with a celebrity.”

 

“She’s not. I mean, she is, obviously, but she doesn’t act like one. She’s nice, and funny – and just, so optimistic, it’s crazy,” Foggy said, totally unaware that he was gushing again. _She reminds me of you_ , he didn’t say.

 

He also did not sigh, or give any indication that he was annoyed with Matt. It wasn’t Matt’s fault that he was gorgeous, and his looks were Foggy’s sexual kryptonite – in many, _many_ ways. Instead, he tried to look on the bright side. If Trish couldn’t handle meeting Matt without drooling, it was better to find out sooner rather than later, before he became overly attached.

 

Though Foggy wondered if it was already too late.

 

But whatever. He could play it cool.

 

Matt, on the other hand, was feeling a little bit guilty that he hadn’t told Foggy he sort…already spoke to Trish, and they had a…mutual friend? Yeah, that was probably the best way to put it. But the truth was, it was not his secret to tell. If Jessica didn’t want her name associated with Trish’s, he would respect that effort.

 

They were a bit outside of the Kitchen, which was why he at first didn’t notice there was a familiar person around. Familiar and welcome. She was only half a block away before he realized she was there.

 

“Jessica is nearby,” Matt said, and Foggy wondered if he knew he was smiling faintly.

 

“Great! Maybe you can say hi.”

 

Matt’s slight smiled morphed into a slight frown. “She’s coming this way. I think…someone else is with her.” A breeze carried the whisper of the person’s scent. It was an expensive fragrance, and managed to blend wood, flowers, and musk in a way that laid beautifully over their skin. Her skin. “A woman.”

 

Slowly, Foggy said “That’s…Trish. She’s with Trish. Matt, why is your nighttime playmate walking with my date?”

 

“Um,” Matt said stupidly.

 

Foggy glared at the guilty puppy expression he was wearing. “Did you know about this? Is this some sort of double date?”

 

“No, I didn’t-”

 

Loudly, they heard Jessica sigh and turned around to see the two women, Jess impatient and Trish confused. “Jesus fucking Christ, it’s Nelson.”

 

Trish frowned, an underlaying current of suspicion in her tone. “Wait, you already know him? I said he _wasn’t_ one of Hogarth’s.”

 

“He isn’t.” She rolled her eyes, hip cocked as she stared the two of them down. “I should’ve known Hot Lumberjack Lawyer was Nelson.”

 

Foggy and Matt both grinned, unable to help themselves, and Trish blushed hotly and whispered “ _Jessica_!”

 

“What? You didn’t want me crashing your date anyway!” she said, shrugging. “But it’s Nelson, so you’re off the hook.”

 

“Just like that?!” Trish squawked, “You gave me a hard time the whole way here and just like that, he has your blessing?!”

 

Jess didn’t bother lowering her voice – Matt would hear her no matter what volume she was using at this distance. “Normally your taste in men bites the big one, but you did good this time, Trish.”

 

Furious, Trish hissed “I don’t have-”

 

“The last one landed you in the hospital,” she said, low enough that Foggy didn’t catch it, almost snide beneath her calm tone. _“After_ punching me through a wall.”

 

Foggy didn’t hear it, but Matt still did. He clenched his fists, molars grinding. He was suddenly reminded of the odd empty square of space in Jess’s apartment, the smell of fresh paint and varnish. Having superpowers didn’t give _anyone_ the right to hit her that hard and _Trish_ …god, what must he have done to put her in the hospital? What must he have done to Jess that she couldn’t stop it?

 

But the anger wouldn’t help them, even if he did have plenty of it.

 

“-your friend, Foggy? Oh! Is this your business partner?” Trish said, when his ears tuned back in.

 

“Matthew Murdock,” he said, holding out his hand in her general direction, smooth reassuring smile firmly in place. “Please just call me Matt.”

 

“It’s nice to meet you, Matt. Foggy told me you’re a fan.” There was gentle note of teasing in her voice. It was just as smooth and sweet as it was on the radio. But the radio couldn’t describe her scent, the way that perfume seemed to gently touch him under the chin and turn his head in her direction. “So how do you guys know Jessica?”

 

“Oh, we-uh…” Foggy floundered, hard.

 

“Murdock is my boyfriend,” Jess said flatly, making them both choke on air. It should be illegal for anyone to say his name that way. He was pretty sure he could make that argument in court. The judge would have to agree, he was certain. “The one you think is a _handsome devil_.”

 

Both men froze on the spot and Trish, startled, said “Ah, but he’s, um-”

 

“Yep,” Jess said, cutting her off.

 

“Oh.” There’s a thoughtful silence and then Trish said “Wait, just a second, I-”

 

“For fuck’s sake, Trish,” Jess said, as she pulled something shaped like a narrow book from her purse.

 

“You said, um, you said you like chocolate,” she said hesitantly, and held it out for him to take.

 

Matt smelled it as soon as she opened her bag, decadent and rich. “I also said you didn’t owe me anything.”

 

“Wait, back up,” Foggy said, “You _already_ knew her?”

 

“I knew that she cared about Jessica, apparently enough to thank me with…” Matt’s eyes widen beneath his glasses, nostrils flaring. “With Himalayan salted caramel chocolate. And…chipotle peppers? But we’ve never actually met in person until now.”

 

“You were planning to tell me this, _when_?” Jess demanded, glaring between the two of them.

 

“Didn’t seem important,” Trish said with an innocent shrug, that was not innocent at all.

 

More apologetic, Matt said “Jessica never mentioned you, not even in passing. I assumed she wanted to protect Trish – it’s what I would do – so I didn’t want to give away her secret. Unlike some people. Jessica.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If my Matt shirt says "Filled with anger and Jesus", my Jessica tshirt says "Fear is healthy in a man"


	6. Ratios

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Chanting to the tune of Skip-to-my-lou* 
> 
> "I like soft things, how 'bout you? I like soft things, how 'bout you?"

“Jessica never mentioned you, not even in passing. I assumed she wanted to protect Trish – it’s what I would do – so I didn’t want to give away her secret. Unlike some people. Jessica.”

 

She shrugged, unapologetic. “You’re not exactly subtle, and I’ve been seen in town with you more than once. Trish just wanted to make sure Murdock wasn’t going to dump my body in ditch.”

 

Trish flinched, a movement neither men missed, but her voice was light and steady went it came out. “I forced it out of her, it’s true. Made her tell me all about her new…boyfriend.”

 

“He’s a cheap date, but at least I get some exercise,” Jess drawled, with a leer she knew Matt wouldn’t see at this distance. “Even if he leaves me sore all the time. That red leather does hide a lot of stains, though.”

 

It didn’t matter – it translated into her voice. “We-you-don’t make it sound like that!” Matt squawked, flustered as both Trish and Foggy began laughing, sweet and musical even to his extraordinary ears. Two could play at that game. Straightening, he gave Jessica his most wicked smirk. “Jones, do you always have your mind in the gutter while I’m around?”

 

“What can I say,” she purred, eyes narrowed at him. Her heart didn’t even jump. “You really _put the devil in me_ , Murdock.”

 

He was trying not to smile. He was failing hard. “I don’t think I like what you’re implying there, Jones.”

 

“Oh my god, please stop flirting with each other,” and Foggy’s words were annoyed, but his voice was amused – and _pleased_?

 

Trish snickered. “In front of my salad?!”

 

Foggy’s surprised giggling could’ve fueled Matt Murdock for a week. “That’s amazing. She’s amazing.”

 

Foggy was nearly vibrating with excitement – despite his initial misgivings and confusion, it sort of did turn into a double date. Matt had game seeping out his pours, but Trish was more entertained than charmed and Jess’s response was _Roasting. His. Whole. Ass_. And Matt, the poor man, was so helplessly enamored of her, he seemed unable to do anything but come back for more every time. The last time he’d seen Matt smile this much was before Landman and Zach.

 

But Foggy was his wingman for nearly a decade, and Matt never once actually made The Final Move. Never went for his tried and trusted lines – ‘can you guide me?’ or ‘you have such a beautiful voice’. Then again, Jessica probably knew better than he did how very much guidance Matt did not need, and Foggy had only met her a month ago, but he was absolutely sure that her reaction to the latter would involve her fist and Matt’s face.

 

It made Foggy more certain than ever that Matt was serious about her. His best friend had a lot of good and admirable qualities, but Foggy was not blind (ha) to his faults. Matt, as far as he could tell, was great at casual sex and almost epically bad at falling in love.

 

He fell in love with people who were bad for him (Elektra), couldn’t tell when people who were good for him loved him (Foggy), and became comically awkward around people who expressed mild interest (Karen).

 

Foggy wasn’t as good at reading Jessica yet, but he felt certain she must have some sort of affection for Matt – he doubted she would put up with him longer than ten minutes otherwise.

 

Matt excused himself to go to the restroom when their server refilled their drinks. Foggy watched with amusement as Trish swatted Jess’s arm. “Ha! So he is cute!”

 

“And I say again: _puppies_ are cute. You’ll notice I don’t own a dog,” she said, disaffected as she slurped her rum and coke. “He can also still hear you.”

 

Startled, Trish said “He – what?”

 

Jess scoffed. “Do you honestly think I let random blind guys in leather fetish wear trail my ass around town? He can hear every word we’re saying.”

 

“Oh.” Clearing her throat, Trish smiled maliciously. “Jess told me you’re cute like a puppy dog, Matt.”

 

Foggy snorted out a laugh and Jess muttered “I don’t even like dogs…”

 

“How exactly do you know each other?” he asked, heart tripping over itself as Trish laced their fingers together beneath the table.”

 

“We’re sisters,” Jessica said flatly.

 

“Adopted,” Trish said, with an odd note in her voice. “My mother adopted Jessica when we were sixteen.”

 

“ _Trish_ is the one you went skinny dipping in an Aspen hotel with?” Grinning at Trish, he said “Missus Walker, I didn’t know you were that kind of woman!”

 

He wasn’t stupid, he could hear the way her voice hit that strange note, could see the displeasure on Jessica’s face, but there was no way he was volunteering to wade into whatever the hell that was. _One step at a fucking time, Foggy_.

 

Trish’s smile was an interesting mixture of flirtatious and guileless, blue eyes twinkling brightly. “I’m full of surprises, Mister Nelson.”

 

Jess gagged pointedly and Trish’s heart nearly exploded when Foggy laughed instead of getting into a snit. In the bathroom, Matt could hear it all and paused halfway through washing his hands to just smile dumbly at the sink without quite knowing why. In his ears: Foggy’s laughter, sweet and familiar. Trish’s heart, happy and excited. Jess’s heart, thrumming along in contentment.

 

Warmly, Trish told Matt, “It’s very cool that the two of you get to be heroes together.”

 

“Not the ‘h’ word,” Jess said sharply, even as Matt grimaced.

 

“You are!” Trish said, sweet and sincere. “You do good things and help people, Jess. There’s nothing wrong with being a hero.”

 

“I clean my own messes, that doesn’t make me a hero,” she replied, in a voice so hard that all three of them knew better than to continue this conversation.

 

The sun went down though and it officially became the Devil’s hour – neither Matt or Jess had expected to be there longer than ten minutes and it had actually been two hours. Jess confessed to having a real job to do. It was then that Foggy’s discovery happened.

 

Trish stood from her chair to embrace Jessica – a process that the dark-haired woman seemed to accept in a way he _very_ much doubted she would endure for anyone else. And when her arms closed around Jessica’s torso, Trish’s rested her head there on black leather at her shoulder and closed her eyes.

 

Foggy recognized that look – he was certain it was on his face when he was around Matt all the time. It was the look you have when you love someone, platonically, romantically, relentlessly, with all your devotion, and with no hope that your love will ever be returned. The only difference was Matt couldn’t see Foggy’s expressions unless he was literally standing right in front of him and even then, he’d admitted it was only a vague impression. Trish had to make sure Jess’s eyes were turned away before she could let her face do that.

 

Then Trish pulled away and the moment was broken. Foggy’s brows raised in surprise as Jess, in a thoughtless automatic sort of gesture, held out an elbow for Matt to hang onto, and he took it as they walked out.

 

Foggy did not mention his discovery to Trish. For one thing, how was he supposed to bring that up? Hey, I’ve just noticed that you’re in love with your best friend! Welcome to the club! It would be cruel of him, and Foggy was many things, but he did not consider himself to be heartless.

 

For another, he had no way of knowing that Trish was even aware she felt this way, but there was no doubt in his mind that she did. He saw that look in his own mirror every fucking morning.

 

And perhaps she _did_ know. Maybe Jessica was straight. Maybe she’d already told her that she loved her, and Jessica had said no. Maybe like him, Trish couldn’t bring herself to change their relationship forever by opening her mouth. In that case, then bringing it up wouldn’t be nice or helpful.

 

There was something tragically romantic about it, though. Two people who were already in love with their best friend, falling in love with each other. He might never be first in Trish’s heart, but he might also be the only person who could understand _why_ , who would be able to accept it, because Trish might never be first in his, either.

 

Maybe he should be sad about that. But…it didn’t _feel_ sad.

 

Watching Trish lick chocolate frosting from her lips didn’t feel sad. Watching Jess make fun of Matt while he tried not smile and failed didn’t feel sad. Walking Trish back to her car and kissing her goodnight didn’t feel sad at all.

 

Maybe he still felt things for his best friend, and maybe he thought Trish’s best friend was really cute, but in his mind, Foggy Nelson was getting the best possible world. He could be there for his friend, make a hot new friend, and go on dates where he could kiss a beautiful woman.

\---

Jessica knew he was hurt, she was not a moron.

 

But Murdock was a stubborn shithead, which was why Jess let him stumble around the roof a little bit. She grimaced in sympathy as he gagged and heaved, throwing up his whole dinner and holding his head with one shaky hand. She wasn’t sure how hard they’d hit him, but it had to be pretty hard to get a reaction like that out of Murdock. Finally, she came up behind him and grabbed him by the nape of the leather suit like a mother cat would pick up a kitten.

 

Of course, Murdock yelped and hissed at her like one – “Jessica, I am not a child!”

 

“I know that,” she said calmly. “Are you going to go home and rest now?”

 

“I have to finish-”

 

She cut off whatever stupidity he was about to spout at her by giving him a good hard shake. He moaned and dry heaved, sobbing as the pain exploded in his head, before she said, “You can say yes and I’ll help you get home, or you can continue to be a stupid dick at me, and I’ll carry you all the way there like this. Up to you, Murdock.”

 

Well, like she said. He was a stubborn shithead.

 

Karen, sleeping on Matt’s couch while her next door neighbor had their kitchen remodeled, leaped up and muffled a scream in her hand as Jessica stomped down the stairway from the roof access. She was still carrying Matt one-handed, both of them wet from being thrown into the snow, and he was cursing her name. Loudly.

 

“Put me the fuck down. Right. Now!” He fell to his hands and knees as Jessica, with a careless toss, dropped him to the floor.

 

“There,” she told Karen in a bored drawl. “He’s all yours. I may not have brought him back in mint condition, but he’s still in one piece. Mostly.”

 

Matt tried to turn on her, and Jess grabbed him by both – well-muscled, Jesus, Murdock – biceps and shoved her knee in his back. He bit back a cry of pain and resisted the urge to gag some more, the bruised vertebrae shrieking at the mistreatment, and then had to force down a shudder as Jess’s voice husked right next to his ear, “Are you gonna get in the fucking bed by yourself, or would you like me to keep going?” Squeezing his arms, she added, “Don’t make me scare your poor girlfriend, Murdock. I think I might’ve already given her a heart attack.”

 

“Coworker,” he said hoarsely, even as he wondered why that was an important correction. “Not girlfriend.”

 

“The nice lady who looks really worried I’m about to crush your skull,” Jess said, rolling her eyes.

 

“K-Karen,” she stammered, pushing her hair away from her face as she watched Jess pull Matt up by the arms the way one might pick up a throw pillow. “You-you must be Jessica.”

 

“That _is_ my name,” Jessica agreed, dragging Matt into the bedroom.

 

Karen hovered, still standing in the living room. On the one hand, she was worried that Jessica really was going to hurt Matt – not that she could do anything about that, because she was no help against a woman who could carry Matt with one hand. On the other, Matt’s facial expressions when speaking of her made Karen very reluctant to place herself in the bedroom with the two of them in there.

 

She compromised by dragging the first aid kit from the closet and getting the trunk Matt kept the suit in ready for its return, before bringing up Claire’s number on her cellphone. “Yes, hello! I’m sorry, it’s Karen…”

 

In the bedroom, Jess said “Alright, how do you get the red pajamas off?”

 

“Jessica, you don’t have to-”

 

“Would you rather the cute blonde coworker help you?”

 

Silence.

 

“Murdock, you’re lucky to not be paralyzed from the waist down right now. So how do I get you out of this?” She helped him unlatch and unzip and unbuckle all of the pieces that would normally require Matt to bend or twist, and when Jess saw the body beneath murmured “ _Jesus_ , Murdock.”

 

“What?” he croaked, resisting the instinct to twist his head around to follow her movements around the room.

 

Matthew Michael Murdock’s body was the canvass of a cruel and deeply disturbed artist, a mess of texture and color from nights spent exactly like this one, most of them without her superpowered back-up. Her fingertips, so feather light they were barely a whisper upon his skin, as though Jess were afraid to truly touch him, across one of the scars that slashed across his chest, just above his collarbones. “Are you some kind of masochist, Murdock?”

 

He huffed, “It turns out beating up people in alleyways isn’t as glamorous as it used to be.”

 

“Lay down, if you can manage it,” she murmured, quiet and immovable, uncharacteristically somber. “I’ll get you some ice.”

 

Tenderness was not an expression that came naturally to Jess, but that was okay – Matt wasn’t used to receiving it, either. Just the low softness of her voice was an ocean he could drown in. The barest of touches on his skin made him nearly forget the agony of his bruised spine and the pounding in his head.

 

Jess came back with a bag of discount frozen vegetables kept in the freezer and swore all over again the color of his back, grimacing at Murdock’s hissing and moaning when she slapped them onto the center of the worst of it. “You look like a horror movie extra,” she muttered. “How bad does your head hurt?”

 

“Bad,” he admitted, which meant that he might be dying.

 

Reluctantly, Karen came to the doorway with the phone and a bottle of pills in hand. “Claire said you need to take these.”

 

Matt opened his mouth and Jess immediately shot down whatever bullshit was going to come out of his mouth. “Open your mouth and shut your face, Murdock.”

 

Karen had to cover her face before she burst into laughter as Matt obediently opened his mouth and let Jessica throw hospital-grade painkillers inside, shuffling back out to the living room with Claire on the line.

 

Matt gently rested his head on the pillow, face turned to the vague shape of Jess sitting on the edge of his mattress. “You telling me you don’t have any special souvenirs after all these years of lifting cars and punching concrete?”

 

“What exactly do you think I do when I’m not with you?” she asked dryly. “Because I spend a lot of time sitting at a desk and playing with a camera when I’m alone. None of this bullshit with blow torches and nail guns.”

 

Matt chuckled and then winced. Those pills were going to take a while to kick in. Maybe Jess and Claire had the right idea.

 

Quietly, Jess said, “But I’ve got one, yeah.”

 

A cool slender hand picked up his own and, to Matt’s shock, guided it to touch her head just behind her left ear. Gently cupping her skull, his thumb traced out a thick cord of scar tissue followed the line of her ear – as though someone had tried to cut the sensitive piece of flesh right off her. Matt’s stomach ached painfully, clenched tight. Subconsciously, he began smoothing his hand through her hair. It felt like raw silk to his fingers. “Who did this to you?”

 

“I did.”

 

Kilgrave had felt like being touched by a lizard, leaving a cold wet slimy feeling in her mind that had left her gagging and scrubbing down her skin. Luke had felt like being touched by silk-covered steel, more mountain than man, comforting in his immensity. Murdock wasn’t like either – his hand was large, rough, and warm, so very human in way that should not have felt so intense, and yet…

 

She had no idea why she’d invited him to touch her. She’d seen him put men in the hospital with those hands, but he was holding her head like it was a glass butterfly. She closed her eyes, inhaled and exhaled evenly, so normal and serene that her heart never dared to give her away.

 

“Kilgrave,” Murdock muttered, and Jess watched him bare his teeth, a low animal sound of anger coming from his chest, but he said nothing else. His thumb stroked the shell of her ear, infinitely gentle and so slow she could Actually Yell.

 

He fell asleep when the painkillers finally kicked in enough to let him rest. Karen checked on them once after Claire had hung up, peeking into the bedroom doorway. Matt was asleep, but his fingers were still restlessly carding through Jess’s hair. She couldn’t have described her expression for all the free booze in Hell’s Kitchen.

\---

She razzed Matt _ruthlessly_ , of course, about having to carry his ass all the way home and put him to bed. Upon reflection, she shouldn’t have taken quite so much enjoyment out of Matt’s predicament. He got his payback less than a month later.

 

Foggy came out of the elevator whistling cheerfully. Jessica Jones was gonna have her ass handed to her at cards and they were going to eat their body weight in pizza. He tipped an imaginary hat at Malcolm, who did a double-take at him. “Good luck in there,” he murmured, looking forlorn. “Hope you do better than I did.”

 

Wait, what?

 

He opened the front office to the sound of someone vomiting in the bathroom, punctuated with the sound of panting in between the forceful retching. Setting the bottle of good red he’d brought with him on the desk, he edged slowly toward the bathroom door.

 

Jessica, still in a pair of worn cotton pajama shorts and a tank top, knelt in front of the toilet, glaring at him as he appeared in the doorway. “I feel like death.”

 

“Are you pregnant? Tell me it’s mine, darling,” Foggy cooed, unable to stop himself from angling for even a tiny smile. “I’ll take such good care of you.”

 

Jess snorted, rewarding him with a soft laugh before coughing, a wet gasping noise that sounded terrible and probably felt even worse. She grabbed the mouthwash to gurgle and spit before covering her eyes with a shaking hand. Miserably, she muttered, “I got the flu.”

 

“I can see that.”

 

Her skin, already pale, had taken on a grayish cast – except her cheeks, which were a chaotic scarlet, her forehead beaded with sweat. She was also shivering violently from her knees to her shoulders with a feverish chill, her fingers trembling over the white porcelain of the toilet. He knew that Jessica was resistant to some damage – she wasn’t Steve Rogers, but her being this sick meant that a normal person would probably be in the hospital right now.

 

“Did you throw up because you felt sick or did you throw up because you keep coughing?” he asked shrewdly.

 

“The second one.” She looked miserable, exhausted, and just a little bit adorable, if he were honest. _Fuck you, Jones, you are totally Snow White. Maybe Snow White if she crammed that fucking apple down the Wicked Stepmother’s throat, but still!_

 

“Alright, up you come,” he coaxed, helping her stand with a hand beneath her elbow. Foggy doubted her strength had actually failed her, but she was shaking so hard he was a little worried she’d hurt herself unassisted. Lesser men would fear for their lives.

 

She groaned unhappily, sore muscles shifting to lift her ass from the cold tiles. Jess shuddered at the change in temperature. “’m _cold_ ,” she complained blearily with a small uncharacteristic whine to her voice. “Head hurts.”

 

“I know, sweetheart,” he murmured, from somewhere near her side. She should probably get mad about that, but the room was tilting on her. She gave another violent shiver as her skin met the cool leather of the sofa, Foggy’s grip on her arm preventing her from just fucking face-planting into the furniture. There was silence around her, and then a blanket was draped across her body.

 

Jess sweated and shivered and whimpered, face buried into a throw pillow. She was cold, she was always so tired and cold. As though the thought had summoned them, hands stroked, firm and warm down her back and shoulders over the blanket, as though they could press the warmth she lacked into her body through the force of will alone, vigorous massage to bring blood flowing into her. Above her, a voice murmured, “Just get some rest, I’ll be right back, okay?”

 

“Hmm, why?” she sighed, giving a last cough before she dropped off to sleep.

 

Foggy watched her for a moment, holding his breath, but she never stirred. The bones beneath his hand had felt so deceptively small and fragile. Even that little back rub had made her sigh and snuggle the cushions so sweetly, he thought he might be hallucinating. Jess did basic hygiene, but she didn’t strike him as a person who did ‘self-care’. He wondered how long it had been since she’s allowed anyone to touch her just to give herself comfort, even if was Trish, for longer than a few seconds.

 

Leaving the wine on the desk, Foggy went back to elevator and made a stop at the bodega just down the street. He knew what he was looking for, so it was only a ten minute trip. Reentering the apartment quietly as a mouse found Jess still fast asleep.

 

Sneaking into the kitchen, he was able to drop his supplies and locate a knife, but no cutting board, but that was alright. A plate would do in a pinch. His mother would scold him for using boxed broth instead of cooking the chicken himself, but he was a little short on time and equipment, so sue him. Onions, celery, garlic, and carrots all went into the pot with the broth and a healthy grind of black pepper. He wouldn’t bother with noodles until she was awake enough to eat it – they’d just turn to mush anyway.

 

Leaving that covered to cook on a shimmer, Foggy peered into Jess’s bedroom, partly out of nosiness and partly from concern. His check revealed an almost bare room, with sheets that stank of fever sweat and illness, just as he suspected. Rolling up his sleeves, he yanked the bedclothes from the mattress and bundled them into a pile, stripping the pillows of their cases as well.

 

He didn’t have loose change to do her laundry, but he did manage to locate a set of extra sheets to remake the bed with clean linens. How long had she been this ill? There was no use in asking her – if she didn’t wish to answer, experience had already taught him she wouldn’t.

 

Jess wasn’t entirely sure where she was when she woke up, not right away. She did know that her calves were resting in someone’s lap. She blinked her eyes open. “Hnnng?”

 

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Foggy murmured, patting her foot like a cat. “Can you sit up for me, gorgeous?”

 

“Can you go fuck yourself?” she grumbled, without any heat, levering herself to a sitting position on the cushions.

 

“There’s that sparkling charm,” he said fondly, holding out a cup of medicated cough syrup. “All in one go – good girl.”

 

She gagged at the horrible grape flavor. “Ugh, that’s disgusting.”

 

“It really is,” he agreed, and pulled out the thermos she normally kept whiskey in. He opened it and steam curled out of the mouth, smelling of honey and lemon. “Chaser?”

 

A small sip revealed that Foggy had added more than lemon to the tea. There was a double shot of whiskey there as well.

 

“Mm, you _do_ love me,” she sighed, taking a healthy gulp, breathing in the sweet steam as she relaxed into the couch, eyes closing. Her legs were still resting in his lap, though neither of them noticed.

 

He chuckled, watching her black lashes resting against the fever bright blush of her cheeks. He smirked and hummed softly. _Someday, my prince will come. Someday, I’ll find my love…_

 

Jess nudged him in the ribs with her toe, but the hoarse cackle of her mirth did very little to deter him.

\---

This period of relative piece and rest was meant to be broken, they all knew that. Jess just didn’t expect it to be broken like this.

 

Bright lights stabbed her over-dilated eyes and she squinted against the pain. The last thing she remembered was a pain in her arm, tires screeching against pavement. “Wha-?” Next to her, a familiar figure was chained to a wall using a complicated system of rigging and metal. “…Luke?”

 

“Evening, Jones,” he greeted in his rumbling voice, looking grim. “Welcome to the arena.”


	7. Fractions, part i

The world came back to him slowly. Everything in front of him was made of cement. Foggy groaned at the ache in his shoulders and groaned again as the use of his vocal chords made him feel like he’d been trying to chew down screws. Blinking his eyes open, he winced as he lifted his head. His neck and shoulders were blazing with pain at being stuck in one – very uncomfortable – position for so long.

 

“Foggy?” That sounded like…Claire?

 

“Mmmgh?”

 

“Foggy, are you awake?”

 

God, she sounded the way he felt – like an old wrung-out dishrag. He struggled to open his eyes and search for her in the dimly-lit room, startled to find that he couldn’t move his arms. “Where…where are we?”

 

“I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say we might be in Hell,” Claire answered grimly.

 

Foggy looked to his right in the direction of her voice. She was also tied to a chair, hands bound down at her sides. Sweat dotted her dotted and matted her dark hair to her head. “Why…” he said, wincing at the needle-sharp pain in his throat and lungs, his voice cracking. “…why does it hurt to talk?”

 

“They injected all seven of us with something,” she said, jerking her head further to the right, where Malcolm and a woman he didn’t know were watching him with wary exhaustion.

 

The woman said, “They’ve given us the potion made by Black Lotus.” She sounded tired and defeated. “It’s why you fainted. It’s…unfortunate that it worked on so many of you. At least we know that you’re alive. I’m not so sure about your friends.”

 

Memories were beginning to come back to him – Malcolm. Karen. Trish. Matt was in the office late, finishing late-minute research. He swore he’d be there in an hour. They were meeting Jessica at Josie’s, they were – Foggy twisted hard enough to make the ropes cut at him, turning to the left. Beside him, Trish and Karen were also tied to chairs. Directly beside him, Trish was sweating heavily, blond hair slicked back and gone dark at the roots. Tear-tracks ran down her flushed face and her eyes were glazed and staring so blankly above her that for a horrifying moment, Foggy thought that she was already dead. Then, slowly, a fresh trail of tears poured down her face and her chest lifted a miniscule degree.

 

“Trish? Sweetheart?” he said, heedless of the ugly croaking sounds he made. “Trish…are you okay, baby?”

 

“I think I might be going blind,” she said, voice congested after hours of crying, hours while she watched Foggy gasp _I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe_ , over and over, until he lost consciousness. Hours when she wasn’t even able to process the fact that he was probably dead because every muscle in her body felt like it was being ripped apart and stitched together beneath her skin. “Everything is blurry…”

 

“You and Matt can both be in the cool kids ninja club,” he said weakly, swallowing repeatedly to relieve the burning pain down his throat. It helped, but only a little.

 

Trish’s laugh was more of a sob. “Karen is…Karen is…”

 

Foggy’s eyes slid to his beautiful friend further down the line and an animal noise of pain escaped him at the sight greeting him. Lowly, Claire said “She’s been like that for over an hour.” She sighed, soft and heavy with unspoken fears. “I think she’s had a seizure.”

 

Karen was slumped down in the ropes with her head resting at an awkward angle against the back of the seat. Even more worryingly, blood was flowing in a sluggish steady trickle from both nostrils, coating her mouth and chin and the front of her pretty new dress. To Foggy’s eyes, she was barely breathing.

 

“Where’s-where’s Jessica?” he croaked, looking around the room again. There was no one else there. “Jess was…”

 

“Probably the same place they brought Cage and Danny,” the stranger said tiredly. “To the arena.”

 

“The arena?” he repeated, bemused.

 

Claire nodded. “Colleen and Danny have been tracking this division of a group of…well, they’re basically mystic ninjas. The arena is how they make money to fund this shitshow.”

 

“The main group is called the Hand,” Colleen explained. “This division is led by a woman named Black Lotus.”

 

“The same Black Lotus who injected us with nightmare fuel?”

 

Colleen gave a humorless laugh. “That’s the one. She designed it to create humans with…mystic powers.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Foggy said pleasantly, “I must’ve heard you incorrectly. Did you seriously just say the words ‘mystic powers’?”

 

Colleen smiled grimly. “And it looks like it worked on you and your two friends there. It’s why you all fainted – we’ve just been here sweating the poison out.”

 

Alarmed and maybe a tiny bit thrilled, he said “Does this mean I’m about to turn into the Hulk? Because I have to say, I don’t hate the idea, but I’d like to have some warning first.”

 

Colleen shook her head. “If that was going to happen, if would’ve happened already. Whatever power you’ve been given, you have it now.”

 

Puzzled, Foggy cocked his head and frowned. “But I don’t feel any different. I didn’t like…turn green or anything, did I?”

 

“No,” Claire assured him. “You just kept saying ‘ _I can’t breathe’_ and then you fainted. We thought you had died.”

 

“What’s happening to Karen and Trish?”

 

“Everything hurts,” Trish said dully. “I’m losing my vision and everything hurts.”

 

Gently, Claire said “She’s been experiencing severe muscle cramps and her eyesight has been gradually declining.”

 

“Is she…could she really end up like Matt?” Foggy asked anxiously. He was sure Claire understood that he was implying more than blindness with his question.

 

Her uncomfortable expression made it clear that she did catch the implication. “I…I honestly don’t know, Foggy. We can’t rule anything out at this point. Trish, can you still see most of the room?”

 

Trish, blinking another cascade of tears from her lashes, nodded. “There are…flashes. Sometimes. Bright or dark. And I just…can’t stop crying.”

 

Claire said “Tell me if that changes. The crying might be your body’s way of trying to heal whatever is happening to your vision.”

 

There is a loud sound somewhere in the space behind them and she looked visibly tenser. Colleen said “I think Jones has woken up. They’ll be taking us to the arena.”

 

“Uh, yeah, that sounds bad,” Foggy said slowly. “What is that?”

 

“You ever seen a dog fight?” Claire asked, her voice hard. “It’s like that, but they use super-powered people.”

 

“What?!”

 

“We’re the bait,” Colleen said, managing to sound even more exhausted now. “We’re the reason they’re going to keep fighting. If they refuse to go into the ring and perform for them, one of us gets shot in the head. I’ve-I’ve seen it happen. And while that’s happening, they give us Black Lotus’ potion to try and make more super-powered fighters.”

 

“They brought me for Luke and Colleen for Danny. The four of you were brought in to make Jessica and M- _Daredevil_ comply.” At Foggy’s clear expression of horror, Claire said “Daredevil has evaded all attempts at capture. With any luck, he’s planning a rescue.”

 

Glancing over at the women, Foggy sent up a quick prayer to his favorite devil. _Hurry, Matt. Please hurry_.

 

People in ridiculous black movie-ninja outfits moved all six of them, including poor Karen, to the center of a concrete box overlooking an honest-to-god colosseum-like stadium with a dirt floor. Around there, people in incongruously fancy looking chairs placed electronic bets that updated continuously on a screen at the other side of the big arena.

 

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Foggy said flatly, watching as first Jessica, looking groggy and pissed off, was led into the ring and then the largest man he’d ever seen in real life followed behind her. “No, no. They can’t do this – he’ll _kill_ her.”

 

“Jessica can handle herself, she has super-strength on her side,” Claire said, attempting to soothe him, even as her stomach churned with anxiety.

 

“So does he, and he’s _three times her fucking size_ ,” he snarled. “And Jessica’s skin doesn’t stop bullets, Claire.”

 

“They won’t die,” Colleen piped up. “They wouldn’t make them kill each other. Killing them would mean losing a valuable asset that takes resources to catch, the thing that makes their operation money. They only kill them if they refuse to comply with orders. Cage alone took more than twenty men to bring in. They aren’t going to kill them unless they absolutely have to. I know if they have me, Danny will keep fighting. I’m guessing it’s the same for you with Cage and Jones?”

 

Trish now had her eyes closed, a permanent wince etching itself into her face. “Jess doesn’t like to see people get hurt, no matter how tough she acts,” she said hoarsely. “She’d keep going no matter who was up here if it meant their life.”

 

As bad as it was to watch her in so much obvious pain, Foggy was too busy making a conscious effort not to think about how long Karen had been out cold and what that probably meant about her chance of surviving this. “Great,” he said sarcastically. “So it’s just a never-ending cage match that we’re forced to participate in – one way or another.”

 

Grimly, Colleen said “Let’s hope they believe that none of you changed, or you might find yourself in there with them, Nelson.”

 

“I still don’t feel any different,” he insisted stubbornly. “I think that whatever I’ve got is broken.”

 

A bell rang, the signal that was supposed to be the start of them beating the shit out of each other. Instead Cage and Jessica circled around each other wearily, eyeing each other the way two predators on the same territory would.

  
Foggy knew what Jess could do, of course he did. Matt had come home with stories of grabbing moving cars and kicking around furniture like confetti. Karen had told him about the night she brought Matt back by carrying him by the scruff of the costume with only one hand. But knowing that she could do those things was very, very different from watching her do it.

 

It didn’t take him long to realize that Cage was the one actively trying to get away from _her_ – he was more resistant to damage and had a longer range of reach than she did, obviously, but the longer he watched them, the more Foggy suspected that Jess’ hits had more power.

 

“Trish-Trish!” Claire snapped suddenly. “Keep your eyes open! Look at me! Trish!”

 

His neck cricked painfully as he jerked his attention to the woman beside him. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he pleaded, watching her eyes roll back in her head as her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. “Trish? Still with us?”

 

“Yessssss-aaaaah…” she hissed, doubling over as best should could with the constraint of the ropes.

 

Then all of the lights went out.

 

In the arena, the sound of fighting stopped and then Jess started laughing – a loud, maniacal, almost hysterical sound. “He always comes after me, you stupid fucks!” she howled. “ _HAIL SATAN_!”

 

Even from the behind the rough wire, he could hear Cage roaring “Jones, have you _lost your goddamn mind_?!”

 

Oh thank god. Matt was finally here.

 

Next to him there was a strange rustling noise, and something smashed onto the ground directly beside him. “Trish? Trish, are you okay?!”

 

Something crashed straight into him, winding Foggy and knocking all the air from his body and it knocking him to the floor. There was a burning pain down the front of his chest as something with sharp claws raked a hand down his chest and he yelped as the ropes holding him to the chair were yanked forward and then entirely off. _Matt, I swear to god, if this is your idea of a joke_ …

 

But then there was screaming in the room, panicked yelling from the others as a dark shaped moved around, the sound of people being knocked over, wood being broken over concrete.

 

More than anything, there was the harsh, teeth-aching sound of claws scraping over the concrete in the dark.

\---

Screaming, smell fear. Screaming. Dig through the twisted fibers. Screaming.

 

Run. Runrunrunrunrunrunrun. Hide.

 

Quiet.

 

 _See you. See you_. The darkness as bright as moonlight. _See you. See you_.

 

Black masks covering their faces. Steal one from a body put down on the ground, teeth broken, blood smeared over front. Cover mouth, quiet breath. Move fast, move quiet, hardly even a whisper. Slash out, forward.

  
Blood. Cut them open with clever fingers, diamond-hard.

 

Red lights and alarms. Shouting. The darkness was _daylight_ to her. She was feather-light, sleek and fast, muscle and bone twisting smoothly as she jumped and spun and kicked, the air whispering over her skin.

 

Screaming, always there was screaming when she came in. _See you. See you_.

\---

 _“He always comes after me, you dumb fucks_.”

 

_You bet your ass I do, Jones._

 

Matt broke his knuckles on another third-rate ninja’s teeth and snarled at the pair approaching from his left side. To his amusement and disgust, they both actually flinched back from him. How on earth did these idiots manage to wrangle Jess?

 

The whole place stank of fear-sweat and blood (and Foggy, and Jess, and Trish, and Karen, and Claire, and Malcolm). It was only making him angrier.

 

“Call your demon off!” one of them cried.

 

“Jessica Jones doesn’t follow my orders any better than she follows yours,” he retorted blithely, elbowing him in the gut.

 

“Not her!” the other said, panicking. “The other one!”

 

 _Other one_?

 

Farther down the building, he heard people yelling, screaming in terror as they fled from whatever was making its way down the long central corridor – and it was fast, whatever it was. Fast, and it moved almost as though gravity meant nothing, leaping and twisting like a dancer.

 

As Matt began moving in closer to her – he felt certain it was a woman, they moved so lightly – he heard a strange sound. She was not punching them, she swung both her arms as though she were holding a weapon in each of them, very similar to the way Elektra might, but Matt couldn’t hear the whistle of displaced air that should be accompanying a sword or even a knife.

 

Instead there were five much softer whistles very close to her hand. As though…he realized, as though she had _claws_. She swung and the smell of copper and iron bloomed viciously through the air, confirming this theory. The ninja wannabes shrieked with terror and Matt ignored more pleas for him to call off his demon as the last of them retreated down a stairwell leading outside.

 

With the scent of fear-sweat and blood retreating, the woman’s head turned in his direction with the soft swish of a ponytail, wafting her scent towards his nose.

 

Like a caress upon his cheek, like the embrace of an old friend, it greeted him. Woody and sweet but not sugary, warm with lush roses and musk. A gentle finger beneath the chin urging his head to turn and follow her. “ _Trish_?”

 

When he revealed to Officer Knight that Cage had been among those taken, she’d readily admitted that he and Danny Rand had been investigating a woman called ‘Black Lotus’, who seemed to be trying to create superhumans. Matt had the feeling that this was the result in front of him.

 

“Maaaaaatt,” his best friend’s girlfriend murmured, her throaty rumbling of the word making the hair on the back of his neck stand up – with alarm or arousal, he wasn’t quite sure. Unlike the ninjas, she had no problem navigating her way toward him even in the low-lit world he’d created in the warehouse. “Matthew…Michael…Muuurdock…”

 

First Jess and now Trish. He was certain he could argue public indecency before a judge for the way they said his name. She hummed each of the ‘m’s’ in a low purr, as though she were tasting something delicious, ending in a low growl on the hard ‘k’ consonant that gave Matt a wildly inappropriate urge to push her hips against the wall and find out if her neck would taste of her perfume. _That’s_ Foggy’s _girlfriend, not yours_.

 

“Trish?” he gulped. “God, what did they do to you?”

 

For Trish, the world was moving slower than she did. Bright as daylight. Sharp as the edge of a blade. Her language skills had taken a bit of a back-burner because of this. “Jess,” she said decisively, the word infused with a soft affectionate hiss. “Black Lotus poison. Foggy.”

 

Matt’s heart beat so fast he felt sick. “They gave this to Foggy too?”

 

Trish made an affirmative sort of hum in her throat. “Burns the eyes.”

 

“What-” Matt sensed three people coming down the hall toward them from behind Trish, two people walking and one unconscious. Even from there, he could smell that the person being carried was covered in blood, but the body was too small to be Foggy.

 

A familiar voice – one of the people supporting the unconscious person – called out, “Trish?! Trish, where are you?!”

 

“Maaatt,” she purred happily, sounding rather proud of herself. “Found Maaatt, Malcolm.”

 

Matt cocked his head, wondering how she could possibly see them from here – there were warning lights every dozen yards or so, he heard them buzzing, but a sighted person should still be having a very hard time. Shifting uncomfortably, he hissed under his breath, “I’m Daredevil right now, Trish.”

 

“Devil in Hell,” she said, nodding. The more he spoke to her, the better her verbal skills seemed to get, as though Matt were helping her to recall her powers of speech. “To help me find Jess. Help Foggy.”

 

“That’s the plan,” he promised. Further into the building, he heard her heart beating, along with another heartbeat, deeper but just as loud as hers. Matt was guessing that was Luke Cage. It sounded like they were fighting someone else.

 

“M-Daredevil!” That voice was familiar, too. “Are you here?! Trish?!”

 

“Down here, Claire!” he called. “Where’s Foggy?”

 

There was a loaded silence before Malcolm decided to bite the bullet and said “Colleen and Foggy had to stay behind. We couldn’t leave Karen there, and there were more people coming in behind us.”

 

Matt cursed, before he processed the second part of that explanation and realized who the unconscious person was. “Karen? Is she okay?”

 

“She’s had…some kind of negative reaction to the Black Lotus potion, as far as I can tell,” Claire said, sounding angry and frightened. “She’s had a seizure, but I can’t tell if there’s any swelling in her brain. I don’t think there is, she’s already been unconscious for hours at this point.”

 

Gently reaching forward, Matt touched Karen’s head, lightly cradling her skull. “I don’t…I don’t think she is. I don’t sense any bleeding, the temperature there isn’t abnormal. None of the blood I smell is fresh.”

 

“She still needs a hospital.”

 

Matt paused. “Trish, I need your help.” She gave another one of those affirmative sounding hums. “We’re going to call an ambulance, but I need you to stay here and protect Claire and Malcolm in the meantime so that they can help Karen make it to the hospital safely.”

 

“An emergency,” she agreed. “You’ll help Foggy and Jess?”

 

“Absolutely,” he said firmly, giving Malcolm the burner phone to call 911. “Can you do that for me?”

 

“Yes,” she replied, and Matt tried not to think about the way the ‘s’ consonant hissed from her teeth. Had her canines gotten larger or was his imagination just running away from him? It felt rude to ask and frankly, he had more important priorities at the time.

 

Halfway down to the arena-level, Matt was surprised to encounter Foggy and a strange woman who must be Rand’s friend Colleen. Relieved, he said “I was worried when Malcolm said the two of went ahead by yourselves.”

 

Foggy smelled like blood, but he was breathing normally, and his heartbeat was steady if a bit fast. Colleen was also physically okay for the most part, but seemed quite shaken. “We wouldn’t have made it without Foggy.”

 

“Yeah, I’m just _full_ of surprises.” Foggy didn’t sound pleased by that – in fact, he sounded almost angry.

 

He was thankful for the darkness – or the darkness for sighted people, anyway. Matt knew that even the small part of his face shown by mask would telegraph his expression of amazement. “I, uh-heard that they were doing something to enhance people, yeah. If you’ve turned into Superman, try not to hurt my ego too much, alright, buddy? I can’t actually fly or lift buildings.”

 

He expected another joke in return for his humor – about how now Matt would have a Captain America to his Iron Man, or something. Instead, his friend muttered darkly, “No danger of that, pal.”

 

“I’m just gonna give Jess and Cage a hand, make sure the building is empty – Trish is protecting Claire and Malcolm while they wait for the ambulance on the floor above us.”

 

“Trish is?” Foggy repeated, “We…we couldn’t find her. She went a bit…”

 

He didn’t want to say crazy. Crazy was ableist and implied that Trish wasn’t in her right mind. Foggy honestly wasn’t sure what a right mind was just then.

 

“Um…yeah…” Matt said slowly. “Have you-have you, uh…seen Trish?”

 

He could tell his friend was giving him a sideways look. “…why?”

 

“They, um, I think they may have…turned her into like…half a cat,” he admitted, knowing perfectly well how that sounded. He heard people talking in apartments across the street and Jess could punch through steel – he was hoping that knowledge would keep Foggy a bit…open-minded about this whole thing.

 

Sighing, Foggy rubbed a hand over his face. “Oh, good. I thought they’d turned her into something from the SyFy channel. Did she claw you, too?”

 

“ _That’s_ why you smell like blood?” he demanded, outraged. “She _hurt_ you?”

 

“She was trying to free me, I think,” he said mildly. “She’s a bit more wild now.”

 

“Yeah, I noticed.” He paused, listening to Jess swear loudly as a more skilled group of fighters arrived, all attempting to keep her and Cage captive. “Sorry, I really have to go – it’s starting to sound like Jess and Cage need help.”

 

“I’m going to find Danny,” Colleen said firmly. “I can take one of their blades until I can find my own, but I’m not leaving Danny here alone.”

 

“I should find Trish,” Foggy said with another sigh. He sounded hurt and tired and not at all as though he had conflict-ending superpowers.

 

Matt wanted to ask if he could handle himself alone, but didn’t want to seem patronizing. Whatever power he had, Colleen claimed it was sufficient enough to save their lives in active combat. If he trusted Trish to be able to protect three people’s lives, he had to trust Foggy to take care of himself.

 

Later, he will furious with himself that he hesitated at all, furious that he wasted time being worried about Foggy when he already knew that Jess and Cage were both struggling with the sheer numbers being thrown at them.

 

In the arena, the emergency lights were more numerous which was both good and bad – he did not have as much of an advantage as he would like, but at the same time, Jess and Cage weren’t trying to fight blind either. He knew when Jess had spotted him leaping down the rows of seating in the arena, because he heard her say, “Nice of you to join me at the prom, Devilboy. Here I was afraid you were going to make me dance alone.”

 

Luke threw her a puzzled look, wondering why on earth she was talking to Daredevil as though he could actually hear her from that distance, but Jess kept on dodging and punching. If he was close enough to her, Matt probably would’ve pointed out that she had been dancing with Luke this whole time. But, she realized, Luke wasn’t her dance partner. He never really had been, even when she wanted -  well, even when she wished reality was very different than it was.

 

Between the three of them, they were doing good work when it finally happened.

 

When her attacker got through her guard and slipped the knife into her left side, Jessica hardly made a sound – just a slightly sharper inhale. With instinctive panic, she swung out wildly with her right arm, throwing the stabber nearly twenty feet from her and the panicked man scrambled out of her way. Again, she spoke to him, “ _Matt_ ” soft and low, as though she were speaking it in his ear.

 

Immediately his attention on her – Jessica doesn’t call him that, not ever – and then the air is so rich with her blood that the taste fills his mouth. “Jessica,” he breathed, horrified. “ _Jess_.”

 

An elbow to the throat and knocking two pairs of heads together takes care of the last people on his side of the room, but he can’t seem to get to her fast enough.

 

Jessica tried to walk forward – toward him. She didn’t even know _why_ , she just knew that she had to try. But her feet were refusing to obey her command to walk and after the first couple of yards, she stumbled and began to fall forward. Behind her, she heard Luke make an alarmed exclamation even as she began losing consciousness from the blood loss, the warmth spilling between her fingers and smearing over the floor.

 

“ _Matt_ ,” she gasped again, and this time it was nearly a plea, her face nearly meeting the dirt as Jess tried to breathe, tried to crawl forward, tried to get back up and at the very least, say she died on her feet.

 

“Who?” Luke asked, hand pressed to her side a desperate attempt to stem the blood bubbling up from her side all too quickly.

 

He was not really listening, not really paying attention to the surrounding environment after their enemies had been dealt with, which was probably why he was so startled when Daredevil stood in front of them, kneeled down and murmured “I’m here, I’m here, Jessica.”

 

He should’ve been prepared to be even more startled.

 

Jessica reached out to grab the front of Daredevil’s – Matt’s? – armor, curling her fingers over a strap at his shoulder just as the man scooped her up and lifted her. Quietly, he said “If you faint on me, I’ll let Foggy make all the glass coffin jokes in the world.”

 

“But I like apples,” she said in a thready whisper. "Can't have cider without apples."

 

Daredevil paused a moment, before giving his reply. "So did she, Jess."

 

She is ghost white against the blood red of his armor and the agonized way Daredevil was staring down at her made it clear for Luke to see why Jess believed he’d find her wherever she went.

 

The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was in love with Jessica Jones.


	8. Fractions, part ii

Matt could hear the sound of Foggy’s thumb sliding over something flat and made of metal on Jessica’s slender wrist. “Is that a medical alert bracelet?”

 

“Jessica Jones – I Have No Spleen,” Foggy informed him quietly, sitting straighter in the uncomfortable hospital chair/torture device. “The surgeon said you probably saved her life. Where’s Trish?”

 

“Her own damage resistance saved her life,” Matt replied dismissively, shaking his head. “And Claire’s timely escort of the ambulance. It took me a while to calm her down when we finished clearing out the building, but I finally convinced her to go home and at least change her clothes first. Hospital staff tend to freak out when you wonder around covered in blood.”

 

“Know that from experience, I suppose?” Foggy was silent for a moment, and then sighed, a hand over his face. “What’re we gonna do, Matty?”

 

“This doesn’t have to change anything,” he said, soft but earnest. “Not if you don’t want it to. Not every person with powers is Captain America. You don’t have to run around fighting crime like I do. Most people aren’t as comfortable with throwing their powers around as Jessica is.”

 

“Oh, the first time was the last time,” Foggy said, calm but very firm. “Unless I’m in mortal peril, I’m never using them again.”

 

Matt’s brows drew together at the underlaying thread of genuine disgust in his voice. “Foggy…what-what exactly did you do?”

 

Agitated, he responded “I stopped the Hand from killing us.” Matt could hear him squirming with discomfort in the chair again, his heartbeat ticking upward. “Do you trust me?”

 

“Of course I do,” Matt said immediately.

 

“Then I need you to trust me when I say that no one should have this and I will not ever use it unless I think someone will get hurt.”

 

“Uh…okay,” Matt said slowly. “But if this is really dangerous, aren’t you afraid of hurting someone by accident, Fogs? You don’t have any training, but we could find someone – I hate to ask him, but Stick might know-”

 

“No,” Foggy cut him off with a bitter laugh. “It’s definitely not the sort of thing I could do by accident, Matty.”

 

Matt said “…alright. If you’re sure about that, then. I trust you.”

 

“Thank you,” he sighed, and he sounded truly relieved.

 

Matt did not huff and pout about Foggy’s hypocrisy in keeping his power a secret. Not only was his friend not excited to have superpowers, he was genuinely uncomfortable – _ashamed_ , even – of whatever he could do.

 

“Is Trish…is she…okay?”

 

Matt heard his unspoken question. “She seems back to normal, yeah,” he said quietly. “The longer she was with me, the more clear and human her thinking seemed to become.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, I noticed that, too,” he sighed, sounding more relaxed. “I think whatever juice they hit us with just took a while for her brain to catch up to what was going on with her body.”

 

He patted the seat on the other chair and Matt sat down beside him. If it weren’t for Jessica’s loud heartbeat echoing on a loop on the monitor at the other side of the bed, Matt was pretty sure that he would be having a continuous panic attack. She smelled like pain and blood and the sharp burn of hospital-grade antiseptic. “What did the doctors say?”

 

“Beyond that it’s absolutely incredible that she’s alive? I don’t know – they won’t tell me anything because I’m not Trish,” he said with a soft, frustrated huff. “Her only medical contact is Trish, so until she gets here, we’re both stuck being clueless. I mean, I know that she lost her spleen, but what does that even mean, Matt? What do you use your spleen for? On a scale of your appendix to your brain, how important is that?”

 

“I honestly don’t know, buddy,” Matt replied, leaning back as he continued listening to the chambers of Jessica’s heart working. “It’s obviously survivable. She’s-she’s colder than she should be, but that’s probably just the blood loss and the hospital in general. I can’t…I can’t really sense anything else. She’s bleeding internally, I know that much.”

 

“Yeah, they put in a drain until she’s healed enough for it to be taken out. Did you swing by and see Karen? Is she awake yet?”

 

Unlike Jessica, Matt and Foggy _were_ listed as Karen’s contact and they were allowed to hear details of her condition – not that there was a whole lot to be said. The doctors were baffled by the cause for her seizure and subsequent coma. “She’s awake for short intervals now. They want her to stay for observation, just until they’re sure it won’t happen again.” Matt sighed. “She’s…confused. Sleepy. She knew who I was and where we were, but she couldn’t really remember what happened to her.”

 

She also still had a migraine, which was why Matt kept the visit very short. According to Karen, every light had a brightly burning halo around it, which he was fairly certain shouldn’t be the case, but what the hell did he know?

 

Matt straightened abruptly in seat, the familiar sound and rhythm of the footsteps in the hall hammering through him. “Trish is here.”

 

Foggy turned as she walked in the door, sucking in a breath. She was wearing gloves and sunglasses indoors at 3 a.m. “You…you’re, um…”

 

She removed them with a jerky motion, showing him the diamond-like slits of her pupils beneath the lenses. Miserably, she said “Every time I was calm, I’d think about Jess being in here and it would come back again.”

 

Foggy reach out tentatively to rub her shoulder, unsure if she was okay with him touching her. Nothing she was could be more terrible than what he’d become. Horns and a tail wouldn’t have fazed him. “Look on the bright side,” he said, kissing her cheek. “It isn’t permanent and now you have a really good reason to really work on your meditation – I’m terrible at that.”

 

“I can help you,” Matt offered hesitantly, feeling a bit odd to be part of this moment. “If you want.”

 

“Thank you, Matt,” she said quietly, leaning down to kiss his cheek. Her perfume washed over him as her ponytail swung forward, fresh and clean and free of the lingering smells of blood and terror. “For…thank you.”

 

He reached out to capture her hand, still small and delicate even when her fingernails were now claws. “She’ll pull through, Trish. She’s so, so strong.”

 

“I know, I know. I…” She took a deep breath. “I’m gonna wrangle a nurse or a doctor – someone who can explain to me what’s going on.”

 

Matt and Foggy left the room so that the nurse could discuss Jess’ condition with her and even did her the courtesy of leaving the floor entirely despite the temptation for Matt to eavesdrop (Foggy wouldn’t let him).

 

When they returned, Trish was calm enough to have removed her sunglasses and gloves, her shiny manicured nails resting on her legs and the shades tucked into the collar of her shirt. “They had to remove her spleen,” she said, heavy and wet. “She’ll be okay, but she could get a bad infection more easily now – her liver and her immune system will have more work to do.”

 

Before he could stop himself, Matt said “Jessica’s liver has all the work it can handle.”

 

That got a laugh from Trish, shaky though it was, before she returned to somber. Quietly, she said, “She-she needs to be more careful in the future. Her physical strength can get her through a lot but now something as common as pneumonia could actually kill her if she doesn’t take care of herself. She’s going to have to slow down on the drinking – her liver can’t outsource it’s job anymore.”

 

Matt smelled the salt in the air as her eyes watered and spilled over. “I’m scared of losing her! I’m so scared!”

 

Matt was closer and let her lean against him. She didn’t bawl or sob, instead Trish sniffed quietly for a few moments, and he felt a brief press of claws against the fabric at his shoulder before Trish forced herself to relax again and they slipped back into wherever they hid.

 

Softly, Foggy said “She has us, she has Malcolm. You aren’t going to lose her, baby. If she has trouble remembering to take better care of herself, we’ll be there to remind her.”

\---

Karen was trying to follow what Foggy was telling her, she really was. But…it was just very difficult at the moment. She did remember being given Black Lotus’ solution, but Karen was reasonably sure that this was in no way a superpower. She had no idea what this was.

 

There was now a picture hanging above Foggy’s head, a second Foggy whose image was as clear as the one standing in front of her bed. The one made of flesh and blood was promising her that he and Matt would get her discharged just as soon as she felt well enough to leave the bed. The static image above his head was a well-groomed man in long deep blue robes gesturing purposefully in front of him.

 

Slowly, the longer Karen stared, she was able to read words written above the image, handwritten in Foggy’s own thin gently sloping script.

 

I * The Magician * I

 

What did that even mean?

 

“Can-can you get Matt?” Karen asked, pushing herself up the bed, eyes never leaving the picture above Foggy’s head. “Real quick, I just-just need him for a second.”

 

 _To check if I’m crazy_ , she thought, mouth hanging open as Matt walked into the door. _On the bright side, I don’t think I am. On the other hand, this might be the least helpful super ability on earth_.

 

At first, the image over Matt’s head was just himself, in clothing very similar to the sweeping robes Foggy had been wearing, but his were a pale smoky gray. In his left hand he was holding a thin gold chain that ended in a pair of golden scales hanging from the end. In his right was a wine red flower. Then the image seemed to flip over, and it was Daredevil in blood red robes, his mask a carnival-like demon, holding a silver sword in his right hand. Matt’s writing was harder to read, because he didn’t often have a reason to be forced to write by hand and his penmanship had pretty much stagnated in the past twenty years.

 

XI * Justice * XI

 

 _Eleven_ , thought Karen, _why eleven?_

 

“Karen? Everything okay?” Matt’s living, breathing face looked concerned, very different from the teeth-bared fury of Daredevil, and the dispassionate blankness of his illustrated image.

 

“Do you know any psychics, Matt?”

 

“No, I don’t think so,” he said quizzically, hand braced against the door frame.

 

Karen let out a shaking laugh. “Well, now you do.”

 

The two of them couldn’t have been more shocked than if Karen told them she could fly. “What? How?”

 

“I…I…don’t know,” she said honestly. “I don’t really understand what I’m seeing.”

 

Matt tilted his head curiously. “What _do_ you see?”

 

She explained about their double images hanging over their heads, gesturing impatiently as she spoke. “…and obviously it’s supposed to mean something, but I don’t understand what it’s trying to tell me.”

 

“Those are tarot cards,” Foggy said slowly. “You said Matt is _Justice_ and I’m _the Magician_. Can you see your own ‘card’?”

 

Karen shook her head. “It doesn’t work in mirrors. My nurse had the _Death_ card, but I couldn’t see it in her reflection.” The nurse’s picture was also in a different art style, whereas Foggy and Matt looked like they’d been drawn by the same artist. Worried, she asked him, “Do you think this means that she’s going to die?”

 

“No, these things aren’t usually that literal,” Foggy said, faintly amused. When Karen looked at him like he’d grown an extra head, he shrugged. “My sister was super into the Occult all throughout high school. Guess who was her guinea pig?”

 

“So what is it trying to say?” she demanded.

 

“I don’t know – this was my sister’s hobby, not mine, and honestly I’m not even sure Candace could figure out what’s going on here. They have the correct names, but none of these descriptions sound like any tarot deck I’ve ever seen.”

 

“I hate to say it,” Matt said with a sigh. “But I think I might have to contact Stick.”

 

Their faces darkened thunderously and Karen said “The asshole who abandoned you at twelve?”

 

He sighed again. “Yeah, that asshole.”

\---

Trish was trying not to look directly at Jessica – the doctor explaining her condition was much more cheerful than the night shift nurse that spoke to Trish and she had the feeling it was grating on Jess’ nerves.

 

“I’m guessing not having one is kind of a negative?” Jess asked sarcastically.

 

The doctor smiled. “That’s what I’m trying to ex-spleen to you!” Jess turned her head to give him such a withering stare that Trish was honestly surprised that the poor man wasn’t set on fire. “After a splenectomy, you can live a relatively normal life, provided that you guard against the risk of potentially deadly infections.”

 

“I’ll start taking a multivitamin,” Jess hissed, pressing herself flat against the bed and turning away from his careful examination of her side.

 

While Trish had been biting her tongue in the corner the whole time, she very nearly barked at the doctor to give her some fucking personal space when he seemed to realize that Jess was not comfortable with his proximity and straightened up. Still cheerful, he said “You’ll need a rigorous regimen of vaccinations, a careful medication schedule, and a swift change in any reckless behaviors.”

 

“Where would a liter a day of bourbon fall on the reckless scale?” she countered, shifting herself into more of a sitting position.

 

Doctor Cheerful chuckled, as though she’d told a great joke. “You’ll be with us a couple of days, but we’ll need to appraise your home-care team of your needs.”

 

“Oh _hell_ no,” Jessica growled, moving restlessly.

 

In the hallway, Matt clenched and unclenched his fists, muscles reacting to the sound of her anger. Foggy glanced at the closed door, quietly asking “Everything good?”

 

Matt gave a short nod.

 

Startled, the doctor said “Miss Jones, if you were a standard human, your injuries would have killed you…!”

 

“I’m still alive, so discharge me,” she snarled.

 

Foggy could tell by Matt’s face that everything was definitely not good.

 

The doctor’s face softened. “You’re special, but you’re not completely invulnerable.”

 

Jess rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth, making an impatient dismissive sound. Trish leapt up from her chair as she swung her legs over the side. “Woah-woah-!” the alarmed doctor yelped. “Wait a minute-!”

 

The moment she stood up, the world fell away from Jessica. Her vision went away and her knees shook underneath her.

 

In the hall, people stumbled and stared at them as Matt suddenly yelled “ _Jessica_!”, the drum of her heart abruptly dropping away.

 

Trish was there to catch her before the doctor was, faster and stronger than a woman of her size should be. She wanted to cry – Jessica had never felt this fragile. “In the bed, Jess, that’s it,” she cooed, looking into her unfocused eyes as Jess blinked at the ceiling. The room was spinning above her. “That’s good, just lay down and relax.”

 

Trish winced as Jess held onto her arm, unable to hold herself up. Distantly, she noticed that it hurt…but not at much as it should’ve. “…-rish?”

 

“I’m here, baby,” she whispered, then winced again at that slip of the tongue. Luckily, Jessica was in far too much pain to notice right now. She smoothed Jess’ dark hair away from the pale, chalky gray of her face. Gently, she ran the back of her knuckles over her cheek and Trish’s heart skipped a beat as she leaned in. “I’m with you, Jess. Just close your eyes and rest.”

 

Matt relaxed back into his chair. “It’s okay,” he told Foggy in a shaky whisper. “It’s okay. Trish caught her.”

 

_I’m here, baby._

 

He felt himself blushing. Trish wasn’t…? No, he was definitely reading too much into it.

 

According to Foggy, both women were supermodel-gorgeous and after knowing them and meeting them, Matt could confidently say they were whip smart as well. That didn’t… _seem_ like the way you would talk to your sister, but Matt hadn’t even had parents for the last half of his childhood, so how would he know?

 

Foggy hadn’t said anything about the way Trish treated Jess or vice versa, and he had two younger siblings, so maybe that was just Matt’s own cluelessness talking.

 

He wasn’t always the best at reading more nuanced emotions. Matt often wondered if Foggy had really been hitting on him in freshman year, or if his own wishful thinking had embellished his memory of their first encounter. Wishful thinking was all he had, because Foggy had never exhibited the same signs of infatuation since. Women had come and gone in the years, but he was Matt’s constant.

 

Foggy frequently bemoaned Matt’s enormous success in attracting the opposite sex (even when he didn’t want to), as well as his inability to keep them around longer than a few booty calls.

 

Matt found it hard to make excuses for himself without completely giving his pathetic heart away. How was he supposed to explain that Foggy already provided every relationship need but sex? And Matt would happily accept that from him as well if he could find a way to get Foggy to take his pants off.

 

Now…Matt rubbed a distracted hand over his face. That was a train of thought he probably shouldn’t go down.  

 

The sound of swaying footsteps brought Matt’s attention back to the current situation. “Karen, what are you doing? They don’t want you out of bed yet.”

 

Karen’s hand waved in what Matt decided was probably a dismissive gesture. “I heard yelling,” she said hoarsely. He realized guiltily that she’d been sleeping. “What’s going on? Did something happen to Jessica?”

 

“She was being…hard-headed,” Matt said lamely. “But she’s back in bed and Trish has convinced her to rest.”

 

There was a hesitation where Matt could hear her inhaling in preparation to speak, and then exhaling without saying anything. Finally, she said “I’d like…can I see her?”

 

Curious, Foggy said “You want to know what your powers say?”

 

She nodded. Matt hesitated and Foggy said “We should ask Trish first.”

 

They’d told Trish what had happened to Karen with Black Lotus’ potion – and vice versa. Matt heard Foggy quietly ask Trish if they could come in with Karen. “…I don’t want you to think she’s spying on you.”

 

Matt tensed. That was essentially what he did all day. Not on purpose, but he’d spent years knowing about every little thing Foggy did and Foggy had made it perfectly clear that he did not care for _that_ one bit.

 

Amused, Trish said “What am I supposed to do, avoid running into your secretary for the rest of my life? She can come in and say hi!”

 

“I just wanted to check,” he said cautiously.

 

“Don’t fuss,” she answered fondly, and the soft sound of her lips touching his made Matt blush anew, though he hadn’t been bothered by his neighbors having sex below him two nights ago. Louder she said “Matt, please come in. I know you want to see… _well_ , to be closer to her, at least.”

 

Jumping, Matt told Karen “She said we can come in now.”

 

Trish was actually the first thing that Karen noticed because as a celebrity, Trish was hard not to notice, but apparently even on metaphysical level, she grabbed your attention. Holding a pair of long gloves in one hand, Trish smiled kindly at her and said “I’m glad to see you’re feeling a little better, Karen.”

 

“It-it was a touch and go,” Karen said absently, unable to tear her eyes away.

 

Above her was a second Trish seated on a low, golden carriage. Her dress was an ornate gown that looked like it belonged in the ‘historically accurate Disney princesses’ series and her hair hung loose and silky around her shoulders. Instead of a pair of horses pulling her little carriage, Trish had two large lion-sized cats at her feet, one pure white and one utterly black, both leashed with fine gold chains, their reins held tightly in her fist.

 

Her handwriting was also much nicer than either man’s, an elegant looping designed to appear well on autographs.

 

VII * The Chariot * VII

 

Jessica’s image took a lot longer for her to see, formed much more slowly. She also looked much more healthy than her physical body did at the moment and unlike Matt, Foggy, and Trish, Jessica made no effort to meet her attention, eyes turned away from Karen’s gaze. Like Trish, her hair was loose around her shoulders and her dress was straight out of a period drama, but more severe and very dark. The whole world around her was dark. Her chin was resting in her left hand and her right had a white candle resting in the palm, the dim light illuminating her face.

 

Jessica’s handwriting was a set of block letters, blunt and inelegant but neat and tidy.

 

IX * The Hermit * IX

 

Then, something happened to her card that hadn’t happened with the others. The image flickered – not flipping over like Matt’s had, it flickered and became something else.

 

The historical outfit and setting disappeared. Sitting up in a bed – not her hospital bed, it must be her own bed at home – Jessica hid her face in her hands, a smear of blood on the sheets beside her. Over the headboard above her was the purple shadowy outline of a man.

 

*Nine of Swords*

 

Karen gasped as the same purple outline appeared above Jessica’s actual body laying there in the hospital bed.

 

Trish watched Karen’s eyes widen with horror. “Karen, what’s wrong? What do you see? Is Jessica alright?”

 

“There’s a…there’s a man, standing there,” she answered shakily, pointing at the same spot over the headboard. The man, fine purple suit neatly in place, smiled at her with an oily, predatory grin. “He-he’s got brown hair and he wears a purple suit. Oh, god, his smile is _horrible_.”

 

Foggy sucked in a sharp breathed as Trish’s pupils shifted right in front of him, claws retracting from the tips of her fingers. She quickly pulled away from him, aware that her hands now had five razor-sharp blades on the ends. “That’s Kilgrave,” she said with a shudder, then shuddering again when Foggy put a soothing hand on her back. “Can I get rid of him?”

 

“I don’t think…” Karen trailed off, brows drawn together.

 

Kilgrave had reached out an insubstantial hand to touch Jessica’s face and the moment he did, Jessica became tenser, shifting in her sleep. A thin black shadow blazed to life beside him and clawed at him furiously, forcing him to retreat into nothing. The shadow grew and grew, becoming a red shape with distinct horns that stood watch above Jessica with the posture of a soldier on guard. Unlike Kilgrave, he did not fade away. Jessica's card flickered again, returning to _the Hermit_ once again.

 

“You didn’t have to,” she said finally, trying to make sense of what she’d seen. “I think Jessica already did.”


End file.
